


shenanigans

by toxicdotaep (RacheTanz)



Category: John Dies at the End - David Wong
Genre: Angst, Blood/Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Domestic Fluff, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Relationships, Implied Self-Harm, Multi, Other, Panic Attacks, Polyamory, Suicidal Ideation, by gays for gays, dave is BATMANTIS??? in at least one of them, dealing with depression, in at least one of them lmao, john is nonbinary, sort-of undefined mental illness(es)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-04
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:20:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 43,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24367969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RacheTanz/pseuds/toxicdotaep
Summary: series of shorter works ive written; each chapter will have a 'notes' bit at the beginning that says which tags apply to that specific one, but the overall Additional Tags thing might get pretty Sizeable depending on how much i chuck in here lmao
Relationships: Amy Sullivan/David Wong, John Cheese/Amy Sullivan/David Wong, John Cheese/David Wong
Comments: 7
Kudos: 15





	1. Tattoos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John gives Dave his first tattoo.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uhhh few different headcanons here: john has a Fair Amount of tattoos all over his arms/legs, and he draws them himself AND on occasion does them himself; john kept up with art on his own time after getting kicked out of that art class (you can pry the concept of him being artistically talented outta my cold dead hands i love it a lot); john designs tattoos for his friends just for kicks.

Dave just felt like he didn’t want to be alone. Amy was at work, he wasn’t scheduled to show up at his job for another three hours, and he didn’t want to just do nothing at his apartment and feel shitty for it. So he went to John’s place, because showing up unannounced at each other’s houses was pretty normal, and they each knew where the other’s spare keys were kept. 

When he let himself in, John was on the couch in his living room. He looked up when Dave walked in, and greeted him with a cheery, “Dave!”

“Hey. What’s up?” Dave glanced down and realized John was poking himself with an ink-covered needle. “Ah.” 

“I’m gettin’ new ink!” John grinned. He was currently halfway through poking at some kind of doodle on his arm.

“I see that.” 

John’s arms were covered in freckles, scars, and half-assed tattoos that somehow managed to look like complete works of art, just, deliberately shitty. Some of them were drawn by John’s friends. According to John, a majority were from Dave, simply because he asked Dave more often. See, John had this fun thing he would do, where he’d shove a pen and an arm or leg at a friend and demand they doodle something on him. Then, anywhere between ten minutes and a day later, he’d either go and get it tattooed or stick-and-poke it in himself. It was a mark of close friendship, for John, and maybe that was why he asked Dave the most often. He’d been doing this since high school. The first time he tattooed himself, Dave actually didn’t know. John just asked him to draw something on his arm in class, and Dave doodled some stupid octopus-looking monster-y thing, and it was only when that doodle didn’t fade after a solid two weeks that Dave asked what was up with it. John had declared, with the biggest smile on his face, that he’d tattooed it on himself with a sewing needle, Sharpie ink, and an evening’s determination.

From then on, Dave put much more effort into what he drew when John asked him to. Except for the times when they were drunk. John actually had a Sharpie scrawl of Dave’s name tattooed somewhere on him (Dave didn’t remember where, and didn’t ask, either) that Dave did not remember writing. He also couldn’t remember whose idea it was, but he hoped it was John’s. 

“So who drew this one?” Dave settled in on a chair near the couch. 

“Me.” John scooted over a bit. “C’mere, look, it’s a pretty good one.”

Dave sighed inwardly, then moved to join John, peering down at it. “...Yeah. Not bad, man.” It really wasn’t all that bad. It was a little flower of some kind (Dave didn’t know shit about flowers), relatively simple-looking, growing out of a cartoon skull, and John only had maybe half the petals done. 

“Thanks!” John decided to keep working at it, and Dave decided to get up and get a beer, just to avoid looking at John poking himself over and over again. It was just kinda weird to watch. When he sat back down, he turned on the TV and started flipping through channels. John paid it no mind, entirely zeroed-in on his work. They relaxed for a bit, until John was done, and he wiped his arm off with a paper towel before twisting it around to look at it properly.

Then he turned to Dave. “D’you want a tattoo?” John offered.

“Not with _that_ needle.”

“What, you don’t want to be blood brothers?” (Dave snorted.) “But seriously… you want one? It’s not that bad. Honest.”

Dave couldn’t believe he was really considering it, but he was. He glanced at the ink on John’s arm, and then at the needle.

Dave had never really been fond of needles, but it was mostly those needles that doctors use that really freaked him out. This one looked kinda like a weird sewing needle. Just a stick of metal, really. And he both did and didn’t trust John. He knew John knew what he was doing, but for starters, he had no clue what he’d even want tattooed, and he absolutely _didn’t_ want John to just pick something.

Figuring that was an easy out, he said so. “What would I even get tattooed?” 

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the best tack to take, as John’s eyes lit up. “Well… I have a couple designs in mind, maybe.” He then stood up and shuffled around in a pile of stuff before pulling out a small sketchbook and flipping through it.

While Dave knew John designed and did a lot of his tattoos, he didn’t realize John still kept a sketchbook. Granted, he’d always been a pretty good artist, but Dave hadn’t seen him sit down and draw in years. But as he plunked back down on the couch next to Dave, flipping through pages filled with graphite and ink, Dave realized he must’ve kept up with it in whatever downtime he had. He briefly remembered how fun it had been in high school to just watch John draw, and felt a little twinge of sadness at having not seen that in a while.

John settled on a specific page, and showed it to Dave. “Any of these?”

The designs featured a soy sauce bottle, an eye with Korrok’s symbol in the pupil, a severed arm with roaches spilling out the cut-off end, a little tombstone with a heart on it, a bottle of mountain dew, and a few that were scribbled out. 

Dave blinked at them. “Uhhh.” They must have been done pretty recently, he guessed, given the subject matter. “Huh.”

“So, any of ’em speak to you?” John asked in a tone that implied he probably had more designs, somewhere, that Dave could look at, which didn’t surprise Dave at all. He tried to consider which would require the least amount of being poked with a needle, because he for sure wasn’t drunk enough (or _going to be_ drunk enough) for that. 

“I, uh, like the mountain dew one,” he answered mildly. 

John smirked a little smugly, proud of himself. “I figured you would.” He reached over and nabbed a blue ballpoint pen. “So, that one?” 

Dave took a swig of his beer. “Sure.”

* * *

It hurt a lot less than he’d have thought it would. John held his arm in his lap, bent over it and working carefully, and Dave hadn’t seen him look that focused on anything in possibly ever. It was almost more interesting to watch him work than to watch the boring drek on TV, but he really didn’t like looking at the needle. Just John. But then Dave felt creepy for staring at John when he wasn’t paying attention enough to notice Dave doing it, so he quit. Mostly. He watched out of the corner of his eye, gaze snapping back to the television when John moved his head at all. It was just nice to see him working again, was all. He’d always liked drawing. Dave could watch him work on something for hours; it was just fascinating to him that John could fabricate an image out of absolutely nothing with a little focus and a pencil. He looked calmest when he was drawing, too. 

Eventually, John drew back, gently wiped Dave’s arm off with a paper towel, and declared, “It’s done!” 

Dave tilted his arm and stared at it for a moment. It looked good, exactly like it had in the sketchbook. “Nice.” 

“Does it hurt? Honestly, I thought you’d whine more.” 

“Shut up. It feels fine. Ish.” It felt a fair bit sore, like, you know, skin that had been poked hundreds of times with a needle in the past fifteen minutes. “It really looks great.” 

“Good. Try not to rub dirt in it or anything for the next month.” 

“No promises.” 

They reclined on the couch watching terrible TV for another hour, until Dave had to go to work. He spent most of his day idly staring at the tattoo and remembering the feeling of John’s hand gently holding his wrist to keep it steady. It was nice. He didn’t usually appreciate anybody touching him at all, but that was nice.


	2. Bad Days

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dave has a bad day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> emotional hurt/comfort Kind Of, dealing a little bit w Dave's depression, ambiguous relationships

The bedroom door creaked open, and Dave didn’t move. It was probably just Amy coming back in for something. He kept his eyes half-shut, unfocused, staring at the window but not really seeing it. 

The bed dipped near his knees, a bit too much to be Amy, and his eyes snapped to attention; he stiffened a little, not sure of what he’d see, and he didn’t relax much when he saw John leaning over him. “Hey, David.” Dave didn’t say anything in response, just directed his gaze back to the window. Whatever John wanted could fuck off. Dave wasn’t in the mood to get up today. 

He almost flinched when he felt a rough hand gently brush his hair off his forehead, and his eyes flicked back over to John, baffled. John was looking down at him with a little frown of concentration, hand resting on his forehead for a moment before dragging down his cheek and off his head. “Well, you don’t have a fever, so, you're probably not sick.” 

Dave could have told him that, if he’d just asked.

John patted his arm twice. “No reason not to get up!” 

Dave grunted.

“Are you being a grumpy log today?” John asked, though it barely had the intonation of a question. 

Dave groaned and turned to bury his head in the pillow, wishing John would just fuck off already. “Don’t say that.” He really hadn’t liked Amy telling him that was how he seemed on bad days. He knew he was being shitty, and he wasn’t happy about it. He was never happy about it.

A silence settled for a moment. Dave didn’t look at John again but if he had, he’d have noticed John giving him a contemplative look, rubbing his knuckles along his chin as he thought. “Well,” he said eventually, and Dave suppressed an aggravated sigh, “we’ve got two options here. One, either I carry you out of bed—” Dave shot him an incredulous look, knowing full well he was too heavy for that to ever happen— “so we can head to my place, or, two, we bring the party in here!”

“ _Party?”_ He croaked, narrowing his eyes.

John shrugged. “Amy wants to have a movie night. I could probably pull it up on my phone, or her laptop. Or we could go to my house and watch it on my nice big-ass don’t-ask-where-I-got-it TV.” 

Dave considered for a second, trying to figure out how he felt, and came to the conclusion that he felt shitty and he wasn’t about to put on pants today. Even if it wasn’t technically ‘day’ anymore. “I’m not moving, and if you touch me I’ll punch you.” 

“Party in here, then!” John lifted himself up onto the bed and then flopped over to lie on the other side of Dave, bumping into him a bit.

“No—”

“Amy! Movie night _in bed_ this time!” John yelled with enthusiasm, gingerly moving her orthopedic pillow aside so he wouldn’t squish it, then nudging Dave. “Scoot over a little so we can all fit.”

Dave groaned and rolled onto his back, scooting closer to the edge. “You’re impossible.” 

The door creaked again as Amy entered, smiling, popcorn bag in hand. “Good timing, this just finished. Should I get my laptop?” 

“If you wanna watch on a bigger screen than my phone.” John answered. She handed him the popcorn bag and left to get her laptop from the living room. 

John pressed the popcorn bag into Dave’s (unwilling) hands. “Don’t,” Dave tried and failed to give it back, “you know I’ll just eat all of it.”

“Then we’ll make more.” John pushed the bag back, firmly. “Don’t spill it, man.” 

Dave huffed and accepted his fate. And a handful of popcorn. He hadn’t eaten since the Hot Pocket he microwaved as quietly as he could at two in the morning when he couldn’t sleep. 

Amy came back in, laptop in hand, and settled in beside John, who pressed into Dave a bit more to make room for her. Dave couldn’t move over any further, or he’d fall off the bed, and for not the first time he wished he had a physique more akin to John’s. Still, they managed to pile in without anyone falling off, and Amy asked, “What do you guys wanna watch?”

John glanced to Dave, who shrugged. He really didn’t care, or have any suggestions. He passed the popcorn bag back to Amy, mostly just so he wouldn’t be tempted to eat any more of it. John took the laptop and balanced it on his stomach. “We’ll figure something out…” 

* * *

Dave ended up falling asleep first, unintentionally. The fact he hadn’t slept in over a day finally caught up with him in the dark room, comfortable bed, and calm ambiance, and three-quarters of the way through their second movie he was snoring on John’s shoulder. John didn’t say anything, or even do anything beyond gently nudging Amy to point at the snoozing Dave with a grin, but once the movie was over and he was entertaining the idea of having to go back to his house, Amy spoke up. 

She was looking past John, at Dave, and said, “I’m worried about him.” 

John glanced at her, then at him, and gingerly lifted a hand to brush the mess that was Dave’s hair off his forehead. “Me too.” 

“He’d go to you for help, right? If he really, really had to?” She asked in a small voice. 

John sighed. “I think so. He has before.” He let his hand drop onto his chest, then looked over at Amy again. “You can always call me, by the way. You don’t even have to ask if I’m ‘busy,’ just tell me it’s bad and I’ll be here.” 

She almost cried a little at that, but instead rubbed her hand across her eyes quickly. “I’m glad you’re here.”

He gently patted her on the head twice, like a dog, and she half-laughed half-cried into his shoulder for a moment. “I always will be! Unless I die or something. Then I’ll just be here in spirit. Same diff.” 

Amy sniffled, letting her head rest on his shoulder. “I really hope that doesn’t happen.” 

John stared blankly down at the laptop screen, brow furrowed. “…Me too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in case it wasn't clear - im Attempting to imply Amy called John over to help cheer up Dave lmao
> 
> this one's Shorter cause i cut out some stuff at the end that i felt made for a less smooth ending but like. maybe ill add it back in later? who fuckin knows


	3. Bill And Ted Touch Each Other's Chests

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John wants another tattoo.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aka two drunk idiots being a little gay (cw: alcohol)  
> Title is credit to canadaisnolonger on tumblr i kno you were like Probably joking but i couldn't think of a better title so Here We Fuckin Go
> 
> anyways. hey y'all remember how in Tattoos i mentioned john has a tattoo of dave's name Somewhere On Him That Dave Doesn't Remember?  
> :]

“Write your name on me,” John slurred, shoving a wide-tip Sharpie at Dave.

“What?” Dave, baffled, fumbled with the pen but fortunately didn’t drop it. 

“I want you to write your name on me, c’mon, it’ll be fun,” John grinned, turning a bit to face Dave. 

“ _How_ would it be—Whoa, dude—” Dave almost got flustered when John yanked his tank top off and chucked it to the floor.

“Just trust me, here,” John pointed at his chest, on his left side. “Write it here.” 

“Why?” 

“I wanna get it tattooed.” 

“Again, _why?”_

John leaned over, still grinning, and were Dave less drunk he’d have leaned back to keep a respectable distance, but instead he leaned forward, somehow expecting John to whisper something to him, like his reasoning was some great secret. Instead, his drunk dumbass of a best friend reached over to nab his hand, saying, “’Cause you’re my best friend… and I wanna keep you—” John pulled Dave’s hand to his chest, and after about half a second of touching John, Dave wanted to pull his hand back— “right in my heart, bro.” 

Dave wriggled his hand away from John’s grip, snickering, and drew back. “That’s the _stupidest_ reason to get a tattoo.” 

“It’s not!” John borderline _pouted_ at him for that. “Come on, please?” 

“Fine, fine.” Dave uncapped the pen. Some part of him, whatever part still had sense in it even when he was drunk, already knew he would do it, from the get-go. “Just, I don’t know, hold still.” 

“Still as a rock,” responded a very unsteady John. 

Dave tried to gently grab his shoulder to still him, but realized in about two seconds that that wouldn’t work, so he let go and sat back. “Sit against the… against the sofa.” He gestured. “Like. Turn. I’ll _uhhhh_ , stand up?” This was quickly becoming way more of a logic puzzle than he’d anticipated, and he wasn’t actually sure he was sober enough to stand up whatsoever. He had planned to just crash on John’s couch, after all. 

“Whatever you say,” John shifted position, giggling, “you’re the ‘artist.’” 

Dave stood up, tried to step in front of John, and then just halfway-fell on top of him. He’d been trying to lean forward just enough to actually reach his chest, but leaning quickly became tipping, and he lifted one leg, sinking his knee into the couch cushion beside John and practically just sitting in his lap with a little “oh, shit.” John put up a hand to keep Dave from entirely falling over, while Dave’s free hand shot out to hit the back of the couch and steady him. They both burst into laughter, until Dave managed, “Don’t laugh at me, shitbird, I’m drunk.” 

“You’re fantastic.” John snickered as Dave tried, again, to get the Sharpie to John’s chest.

“Why is this so fuckin’ _hard_?” Dave mumbled, squinting as he struggled to keep his hand steady before even beginning to write.

John glanced down and then seemed to realize his hand was still on Dave’s chest, so he retracted it. Dave didn’t say anything about that, but John couldn’t tell if he didn’t notice or was just too focused on the task at hand. “Don’t worry too much. Just write your name. It’ll be fine.” 

For once John sounded almost gentle, so Dave, with a shrug, just kinda went for it, scrawling his name across essentially the top of John’s ribcage. It warped a little around the bend of the bones below the surface, but was still mostly legible. “There.”

John angled his head, trying to see it, and shut one eye, squinting with the other one. “I can’t read upside-down, but it looks like it _probably_ says ‘DAVE’ and not ‘DICK,’ so I’m happy.” 

Dave laughed again. “Shut up.” He capped the Sharpie and stuck it in John’s face. John snagged it from him. “There you go. New tattoo or whatever.” A bit lurchingly, he got off John’s lap and flopped down into the couch beside him. 

John looked down, still trying to see it, before remembering his phone had a camera he could use as a mirror. He spent a few seconds looking at it, grinning, before suddenly slurring, “Can I confess somethin’?” 

Dave glanced over, confused. “What?” 

“I wanted to get this, this—” He points— “tattoo for a while but I always chickened out on asking.” 

Dave gave him a bewildered look, surprised both by the concept of this _not_ being a spur-of-the-moment stupid decision and of John chickening out on _anything,_ ever. “What? Why?” 

John shook his head, laughing, but didn’t answer. Dave didn’t press, either. 

To this day, John still has Dave’s name scrawled over his heart.


	4. Ouch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shit went a little sideways, now John's gotta go to the hospital.  
> Kinda vaguely implies Dave miiiiiight be BATMANTIS??? because I think the concept is fun. If you don't, though, you can pretend it's something else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: blood, injury, hospitals.

Blood. Everywhere. All over his hands and John’s shirt and he had panicked, immediately, when his best friend plummeted to the floor like a ragdoll after stupidly yelling “look out!” and throwing himself between Dave and the night shart. Dave really wasn’t sure what happened after. It felt like the world blurred, went black, and when he came back he was standing over the decapitated body of the creature, but that didn’t matter; the moment he was _there_ enough to think of it, he whirled around. John lay crumpled on the ground, immobile. “John?” Dave had hoped he’d at least lift his head, or groan, but there was no response. “ _John?!_ ” He rushed over, kneeling beside John. Blood soaked the lower half of his shirt; Dave yanked it up to see a dizzyingly deep gash in his side. “Oh, **fuck**.” Dave immediately pressed his hands to the wound, trying to suppress the blood flowing out of his best friend, then took one hand away to frantically fish out his phone and dial 911, yelling into it for an ambulance, right the fuck now, as soon as possible _jesus christ please hurry._ He dropped the phone then, using both hands again to keep the gash closed, blathering apologies and begging John not to fucking die (again). He wasn’t sure how long it took for the ambulance to get there—it could have been two minutes or twenty, the minutes blurred together into what felt like both an eternity and no time at all. The paramedics gently shoved him out of the way to do their job, someone handed his phone back to him, and he dialled Amy as they clambered into the ambulance (no way was he _not_ staying by John’s side) to ramblingly explain, like verbally tracing pieces of shattered glass, what had happened and where they were headed. If she said much in response, he couldn’t process it. 

When they arrived at the hospital, he was shoved out of the way again, and trailed behind, still hopped-up on adrenaline. They wouldn’t let him in the wherever-they-were-taking-John area, probably because he’d just be in the way, and he wound up in the empty reception area, walking around aimlessly. He needed to keep moving, for some reason. He was lucky the Undisclosed hospital was usually pretty dead, or else the sight of a pale, sweaty, pudgy guy with blood all over his hands and arms might be a little jarring for people in the waiting area. As it stood, the receptionist just eyed him warily, fully aware of who he was but not quite sure yet why he was still there. 

He wasn’t sure how long he was pacing for, but the doors opened and a familiar face rushed in. Amy. He stopped pacing around long enough for her to run up to and hug him, asking, “What happened? Are you okay?” 

“It all went south,” he answered haltingly. “John got hurt. It was my fault—” She shushed him gently. “It really was.” 

“Where is he?”

“Somewhere?” Dave actually wasn’t sure where, nor could he remember what he said on the phone earlier. “Uh, did I tell you about the ambulance?” He figured Amy would know more than he would in regards to where people went after an ambulance ride.

“Babe, I love you, but when you panic, you don’t speak English.” 

“Oh.” 

“All I could figure out was at least one of you was hurt, and honestly, I thought it was _you_ for a moment.” She looked down at the blood on his hands. “Are you _sure_ it’s not you?”

“It’s just John,” he answered hollowly, and she shivered. 

“He’ll be okay.” She laced her fingers through his. “He’s pretty tough. And he’s got a lot of experience doing stupid stuff.” 

He really wanted to be able to take comfort in that, but he couldn’t.

* * *

Eventually, after Amy politely explained to some of the staff who they were and what they were there for, they were allowed to visit John. Dave suspected Amy spun some kind of story about them being close family or something—he really had no idea how or why they’d be let in to see him, but he wasn’t about to voice any kind of complaints. It was entirely possible, though, that the hospital staff knew him—or knew _about_ him, anyways—and figured it’d be better to let him do whatever he wanted. He guessed it was a good thing that their patient was one of the two people he would _never_ hurt, at least not on purpose.

They were led by one tight-lipped staff member (who eyed him warily) to one of those beds sitting between two walls of just curtains. John was laying there, unconscious still, with an IV line tethering a bag of blood to his arm. They’d cleaned him up a little bit, but purplish bruises were already showing up on his arms. Dave didn’t actually want to think about how bruised and injured _he_ was, he hadn’t had enough time to consider if he felt any pain, and he wasn’t about to take five to figure that out.

They both pulled up chairs beside the cot. Dave reached out and gingerly took hold of John’s hand, eyeing him like he was expecting (or hoping for) a reaction, but none was had. Amy settled in beside him. They sat in silence for a moment, listening to the sounds of the hospital at work around them. Amy shivered a little, eyes roving around to all the equipment. She never liked hospitals, not since the accident and everything surrounding it. It just brought back all the terrible, terrible memories, but she wasn’t going to leave Dave, and she for sure didn’t want them both to go and leave John all alone here.

“It was bad.” He said quietly, eyes still glued to John. 

“I figured.” Amy gently reached up to wrap her hand around his. Her hand wasn’t quite big enough to reach past his and touch John’s as well.

“It’s still bad.” 

She leaned over, resting her head on his shoulder, and he looked down at the floor. “It’ll be okay, David.”

He really wanted to believe her, and he did, somewhat. It’s not like this was the first time Dave had driven John to the hospital, but it was one of the rarer times where he felt like it was his fault. Combined with the fact that John was still unconscious, and Dave wasn’t sure how much blood he’d lost, he couldn’t shake the fear that things would go even more sideways than they already had. What if he suddenly flatlined for no reason? What if something he didn’t even know about went wrong? What if he inadvertently did something that’d cost his best friend his life? He’d never forgive himself. He could rationalize a lot of things, but he’d not be able to excuse himself of that one.

He also wasn’t sure he’d let Amy stay there the whole night, if John was gonna be unconscious for a while. She still had work, after all. He’d be more than willing to not sleep until John woke up, but she had obligations. Technically, Dave did too, but he was pretty sure he was going to get fired (again) soon, so he didn’t really care. He’d drive her home, or something. He didn’t remember where his car was, though—that might pose a problem. He’d deal with it later.

John’s eyes opened slowly at first, then all at once when they’d focused enough for him to see what was in front of him. He shifted slightly to squeeze Dave’s hand, and Dave’s head shot up, eyes wide. Amy did the same. “Hey, David.” 

“John,” Dave breathed a sigh of relief, and Amy smiled. 

“You okay?” John asked, eyeing the blood on Dave’s hands.

“Dude, I—You took the hit for me. I’m,” Dave almost felt a little guilty, “I’m fine.” 

John nodded, still looking down at their hands. He rubbed his thumb on one of Dave’s knuckles, and dried blood flaked off. “Good.” 

“Are you okay?” Amy asked. 

John shrugged. “Fuck if I know. I feel a little dizzy but I think I’ll be fine. I don’t think the thing was venomous or something. What happened after I passed out?” 

Both sets of eyes turned to Dave, and he in turn stared down at their hands. “I… don’t know. _Something_. I, uh, ‘woke up’ to the thing decapitated.” 

He avoided looking at John or Amy, knowing full well they were exchanging a glance. “No one was there, right?” Amy asked in a small voice.

“Just us and the night shart,” John answered. “I don’t think anyone would’ve seen.” 

She sounded immensely relieved. “Good.”

“That’s almost cute, you know.” John squeezed his hand again and Dave glanced up with one eyebrow raised. “You ‘werewolfed out’ for me.” 

Dave snorted. “Shut up.” 

“I’m gonna have a gnarly new scar for this one, I can feel it,” John continued. “I’m gonna tell it as the time I saved your life, almost died, and then you Hulked out and decimated a monster. Like that dramatic moment in a movie where the love interest almost dies and the guy goes savage for the sake of love or whatever.”

“Pretty bold role you’re casting yourself in there.” 

“Don’t act like it doesn’t fit.” 

Dave didn’t have a rebuttal for that, and Amy giggled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i feel liek this one's prolly not quite so good but Hey,


	5. Nail Polish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dave's really not sure what he's got himself into this time, but he doesn't mind it too much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no warnings or anythin apply to this one its jsut fluff nonsense

It had started with a seemingly-innocent statement. It was Amy’s day off and they were all hanging around Dave and Amy’s apartment, trying to decide what to do, when Amy glanced at her nails and sighed, “Jeez, I’ve really gotta re-paint my nails.” The other two glanced over, having not noticed how chipped the light pink paint was before now, but realizing upon actually looking that she was right, it was definitely worse for wear. 

“Oh, me too, man,” John added. 

“You don’t _paint_ your nails, John, you just scribble Sharpie on them.” Dave pointed out.

John shrugged. “Same thing!”

It was not, in fact, the same thing, but Dave was not going to die on this hill, so he let it go. Besides, Amy was already talking again. “Hey, we should paint each other’s nails!” 

John’s eyes lit up. “Really?” 

“Yeah! I’ll go get my nail polish—” 

“You guys have Sharpies, right?” 

Dave sighed. “There’s a cup in the Junk Room…”

And that was how they got where they were now, relaxing in their living room and talking. John held the nail polish bottle and Sharpie cap in one hand, so Amy’s only hand would be free to paint his other hand. They were nearly done, actually; Amy had scribbled-in John’s left hand, then he painted her only hand while that one was ‘drying,’ and then when hers had dried she’d started in on his right hand. Dave just sort of watched them with a curiosity even he didn’t understand. To some part of him, it looked fun, though he wasn’t really sure why or how. 

Truth be told, he actually helped Amy paint her nails pretty often, since he’d seen her having to use her foot to paint her fingernails, and it looked less-than-pleasant for her to bend that way. He actually put in a lot of effort not doing a shitty job at it, and it was one of those skills he wasn’t exactly going to brag about, but he was proud of it. She’d gone from politely telling him he did a good job to genuinely complimenting him on it to a simple “thanks, babe,” which, in his mind, meant he’d won. He was good enough at it that she didn’t feel the need to praise him to compensate, nor was she just pretending it didn’t suck. Every time he did it, though, he felt that same weird curiosity—like he wanted to know what it felt like, to understand the appeal of it. It really made no sense to him. Sure, it looked nice, he wouldn’t deny that, but it seemed to take a lot of upkeep to make it stay that way.

Amy caught him eyeing their hands multiple times while they were working. John too, probably, but Dave didn’t admit to anything until Amy held up the little brush covered in pink paint and said, “Babe, you wanna try?” 

He tried to pretend he didn’t know what she meant. “Your hand’s already painted.” 

She and John exchanged a glance, John snickering a little. “You’re not _that_ stupid. Come on.” John picked up the Sharpie. “It’ll be fun! A little gift from the both of us.”

“Or, you could tolerate it for us?” They were working both possible angles here, and Dave had to wonder if they’d thought this over before, or if they were just that in-synch now. But he didn’t want to sour the mood (nor did he actually have any real objections to it, other than that stupid concept that Men Don’t Do That, which he didn’t agree with but couldn’t truly shake). “Please?” 

He couldn’t ever say no to her. “Oh, fine,” he shuffled over, extending his hands to them. John nabbed his left hand and used it to drag him much closer, clearly pretty excited about it. 

“Don’t fuck up my hands, please,” Dave eyed John and his notoriously-less-than-steady hands. 

“We won’t, babe,” Amy held his hand up with her stump and smiled gently at him, the sort of smile that made him melt just a little bit, “promise.” 

“It’s not _you_ I don’t trust,” he pointed out, but didn’t say anything else about it. The conversation drifted elsewhere, anyways, as the two carefully painted his nails. It was actually pretty nice, Dave had to admit. He’d likely feel almost pampered, if it weren’t for the fact that John was just scribbling away at his left hand like an impatient third grader told to finish a colouring sheet before he could go play outside.

Amy gently blew on his nails once she’d painted them all, gently putting the brush back in the little bottle of polish. John turned Dave’s hand one way, then another, poking at some parts he’d missed, then relinquished his grip on Dave’s hand, though Dave left it hovering there for a moment before turning it to inspect John’s work. Amy let go of his hand too.

Dave looked down at his nails. One hand pink, one hand black, like he was having two different identity crises at once. 

He liked it.

“I’m surprised there’s not Sharpie all over my hands.” He remarked. 

“I’m not _that_ bad-off.” John prodded him with the (closed) Sharpie and Dave pulled away, snickering. John knew damn well he was ticklish, and he knew too well where to poke Dave to make him laugh.

“Do you like it?” Amy asked, looking up at him hopefully. 

As much as he really, _really_ did like it, he felt like he couldn’t say anything more than, “Sure” about it. He studied his newly-decorated nails and pretended he didn’t see the other two exchange a glance yet again.

* * *

Over the next few weeks he found himself glancing down at his hands whenever he felt shitty. He wasn’t sure why or how but the paint on his nails just felt like a good visual reminder that he had _two whole people_ who cared about him, very much, and when he got stressed-out or miserable he’d glance down and remember how it felt for them both to be holding his hands, and how nice and stress-free that day had been. It worked to calm him down almost _astonishingly_ well.

And that’s why when he noticed they were chipping off (or, in the Sharpied-on hand’s case, streaking off), it was really no question in his mind as to whether or not he’d try to fix them up. For some reason, though, he didn’t feel like he could just patch it up himself—it _had_ to be them or whatever magic was there would be gone. So he gingerly approached them about it the next time they were all aimlessly relaxing at his and Amy’s apartment.

John grinned. “You like it that much?” 

“Yeah,” Dave admitted, a touch embarrassed. 

“Of _course_ we’ll help you repaint them!” Amy looked beyond thrilled. “I’ll get the nail polish.” She hustled off in that fast-paced little walk she used when she was excited for something.

For a moment, John and Dave were left alone. John beamed at him. “It’s fun, right?” 

“It’s nice.” Dave averted his eyes. “A nice reminder.” 

John patted him on the arm. “Good. I’m glad.”


	6. Not A Monster

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John has to talk Dave down, again.
> 
> Takes place between JDatE and TBiFoS

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: suicidal ideation, death mention, implied self-harm

At some point, earlier in the year, around New Years probably, Dave had said to himself he’d be different this year. Or at least, he hoped he would. He wasn’t exactly going to _commit_ to it, he knew himself too well.

When he’d hoped for that, though, he hadn’t meant he wanted to turn out to be a monstrous otherworldly clone who killed and replaced his original self.

He considered the humor in thinking that it was even _him_ who had that thought about himself. He was probably still in a fucking vat somewhere in that other world when the _real_ Dave was thinking about his own future. The poor fucker had no clue what was coming to him.

It was a dark night, because nights were usually pretty dark, but also because he hadn’t turned the lights on in his house. He was sitting on his couch. John was probably at some party. Amy was miles away in her college. He had half a mind to call her, to say something like _whatever happens, it was never your fault,_ or to tell her he loved her, or to try again to convince her to date whatever boy she’d recently said was nice to her, but he didn’t. He knew it would be selfish, something that’d only benefit him, and likely haunt her forever. She didn’t need that. If they didn’t speak beforehand, she could move on more easily, couldn’t she? 

The hollowed-out Quran sat on the table in front of him, opened and empty. He held his cell phone in one hand, the gun in the other. 

He was stalling, though he didn’t know why. It should be easy, right? He’d thought about it plenty of times. A lifestyle like his, where he had all kinds of weapons on-hand, the thought wasn’t foreign to him in the slightest. The main hesitation was wondering if any of them would actually work on him. But he was tired of bleeding just to prove he was still human somehow when he knew damn well he wasn’t. (It wasn’t enough, anyways.) The little tattooed mark on his toe would always be there to remind him he wasn’t the real Dave, and the real Dave died in the snow that day and _fuck, he should have, too._ It would have been better for everyone involved.

He should call John. 

John had always made it pretty clear, for the other Dave, the real David, that he’d always be there when shit got too bad. Practically ever since they met, John had been there to step in at the last minute and talk him down from doing something stupid. And he’d made it pretty clear, by essentially babysitting him for an entire fucking _month_ after the whole debacle, that this connection extended to Monster Dave too, undeserved though it may be. So Monster Dave stared at the phone in his hand and thought long and hard about it, thought long and hard about whether or not he wanted to be stopped or if he finally wanted to know what it would feel like.

He’d always been a coward.

As he dialled John (saved as “3” on his speed dial), he wondered if he truly didn’t want to die, or if he’d been imbued with some kind of survival instinct, to keep this body alive until the right moment for it to ‘monster out’ and kill all of his friends. Well, all of his _friend_. He really only had John. He still expected Amy to call, eventually, and say she met someone else, and then that’d be the end of it. It would be what they both deserved.

The phone only rang once before John picked up. “Hey, David!”

“Hey.” Dave croaked, then cleared his throat. He hadn’t realized how much his vocal cords seized up from his unknown hours of sitting here on his couch dead silent. 

He hardly ever called John. Or _anybody_ , for that matter. Dave was a person other people spoke to; he didn’t initiate conversation if he could avoid it. So the fact he was calling John, coupled with the time-of-day he was calling, already had red flags lighting up in John’s mind. Despite that, he tried to keep his tone light. “What’s up, man?” 

Dave didn’t know where to begin. “...Nothing.” 

John could put two and two together. “Hey, I’ll be there in ten. Alright?” 

“Okay.”

“I’m not hanging up, though. So you won’t do anything stupid.” 

The thought _what if_ **_I_ ** _hang up_ flitted through Dave’s head. But he wouldn’t. “Okay.”

So he sat there on the phone with John but neither of them saying much of anything, other than one time John dropped his phone and mumbled a “shit, fuck, Dave, you still there?” which Dave of course answered in the affirmative. Dave wondered how drunk John was, and if he’d been interrupted from a fun party. He wondered how many nice things John missed out on because he had to come over and keep Dave from being stupid. He felt like a burden. He almost hung up the phone, but then he felt it would be even worse to make John find him. No, he’d decided, and he was stuck with it now.

The sound of an engine humming outside his house prompted him to move for the first time in hours and his stiff muscles screamed in pain. He didn’t even realize he’d tensed up until he turned his head to look at his front door, hearing footsteps approach. John opened the door, letting in warm summer air for a moment before he gently shut it behind him. “Dark in here.” He observed, clicking on the overhead light.

Dave winced and blinked, the sudden brightness a little bit painful on his eyes, and by the time he’d recovered John was sitting on the couch next to him. Dave didn’t realize he was still holding the gun until he felt John trying to gently worm it out of his grip, and he relinquished the weapon. John tossed it onto the table, out of Dave’s arm reach. “What’s up?” He asked for the second time now, tone far too even, like he was really putting in a lot of effort to stay cool.

Dave decided to just tell him bluntly. No point beating around the bush. “I’m a monster and I shouldn’t be here.” 

John paused for a moment, as if waiting for Dave to say more, but when he didn’t, John said simply, “You’re _not_ a monster.”

“But I’m not _Dave_.”

“You **_are_**.” John’s eyes flashed, but not with anger, exactly. It was something similar in intensity, Dave could tell that much, but it wasn’t anger. He knew what _that_ looked like. John firmly poked a finger into his chest. “You’re David. You are _David Wong_. You are _my best fucking friend_ and _you will not do this_.” 

“I’m not. I’m just a m—”

“ **Bullshit—** ”

“You _know_ I am, dude.” 

“You’re _different_ , fine, but you’re not a _horrible_ _monster_ ,” John was adamant, that defiant look on his face that Dave actually didn’t usually see, “and either way, you’re still my best friend.” 

“Your best friend died alone in the snow.” Dave didn’t want to be harsh, but at the same time, he did. He could feel that cold, hateful thing in his gut telling him, _if you convince John to leave, you won’t have any reasons left to stay_. “I killed him.”

He could tell from the way John inhaled through his teeth, sharply, quietly, that it hit home, and he felt terrible. He deserved to feel terrible, and he wanted to, but John didn’t deserve to get hurt in the crossfire. He looked away and Dave was almost certain he would get up and storm out, but instead he let out a breath and turned back to Dave. Dave couldn’t read his face as he said, “And yet, you’re still in front of me. You died _and you’re still here_.” 

“I’m not him.”

“As far as _I’m_ concerned, _yes_ , you _are_.” John leaned back, casual as can be, and propped his feet up on the table in front of the couch. “You have all his memories, you look like him, you talk like him, you smell like him—”

“Should I ask why or how you know what I smell like?”

“—Not important. It doesn’t matter, man. You’re Dave. Deal with it.”

Dave laughed, just one quick incredulous laugh, devoid of mirth. “ _Deal with it?”_ He echoed, disbelieving.

“Yep! Deal with it, ‘Monster Dave’—” John even did the air-quotes with his fingers— “you’re Dave, and _that_ means you’re stuck with me. And maybe it’s selfish, but I don’t care—I’m keeping you around, goddamnit.” 

Dave blinked at him, completely baffled. “Keeping me around?” He felt like a stupid parrot, just speaking John’s words back at him, but John didn't remark on it.

John locked eyes with him. “Yeah. You’re my best friend. I need you around.” 

Dave stared back, dumbstruck, unable to summon _any_ words, let alone the right ones. _I need you around_ kept rattling around in his head as he continued to make an uncomfortable sort of eye contact with John, and he wasn’t sure if he was lost in his eyes or just lost in general. They were really quite a bright blue. This was an observation he’d had before, but it was the little hazel patches in each iris that made the bright blue even more noticeable. Pretty.

“Hey, you wanna play that shitty virtual hockey game?”


	7. Ouch 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> it's dave's turn now ig  
> 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: blood, injury, hospitals

It was yet another one of John’s four-in-the-morning calls that had Dave out and about fighting monsters when he’d really much rather be asleep. Amy was waiting in Dave’s new-to-him-but-not-this-planet truck, a hand-me-down he and John fixed up. It was quite nice, despite the faint smell of cat piss that still permeated it from the previous owners. It actually had a backseat to it, which was nice, because that’s where Amy preferred to sit in a car whenever she had to be in one. She’d insisted on tagging along, because “If this stuff has to wake me up, too, I’d like to be there, at least. Plus, what if you got hurt, and couldn’t call 911?”

Her logic was, as per usual, very sound, so Dave didn’t object to her coming along. John’s only question to her had been if that’d be smart when she had to wake up early for work the next day, which she answered with an apathetic shrug that settled the matter.

Despite her wanting to be involved, Dave insisted that she stay in the car, which he told her was so she could call 911 for them more easily without a monster getting to her and that way they'd all get out alive, but really was mostly for her own safety. She could lock the car and get some sort of Emergency Services out there to help her without getting mauled (hopefully, anyways) if this thing killed the other two. 

That was starting to look like a real possibility. They’d been running around in this too-shallow-to-be-a-ditch, too-deep-to-be-just-a-slope patch of dirt trying to kill something that looked like a mountain lion put through a meat grinder then hastily assembled back into a mountain lion shape and spray-painted matte black. Hard to see in the dark, unpleasantly fast, very determined to eat at least one of them. They regrouped for a moment in the middle of the dirt hollow, both panting. 

“You seen it?” John wheezed, wiping his forehead off.

“No, I—” Dave’s eyes widened as he caught a glimpse of the thing over John’s shoulder. “Look out!” He body-checked John out of the way, swinging his axe, and he felt it make contact with the creature, heard the satisfying screech of a monster that had definitely thought of the distracted John as an easy snack quickly discovering Dave and his axe were _not_ about to let that happen. He felt the thing’s body bump into him clumsily and he heard the tear of his shirt fabric, which kinda pissed him off because god damnit, he was tired of having to buy new clothes when otherworldly beings ripped holes in the ones he was wearing. He swung the axe again, felt it make contact once more, then kept at it until the thing wasn’t moving. When he felt it wasn’t going to get back up again, he stepped back, breathing hard, but as he did so he saw it beginning to knit itself back together and realized no amount of blunt force trauma would make this thing fuck off.

“Get back!” John rushed forward with his makeshift flamethrower—a lighter and a can of hairspray—and set the thing alight with one vaguely-fruit-scented, massive blast. It shrieked and burst into bonfire-level-flames, burning like an oil slick. In fact, if Dave had been able to see into the far-too-bright fire, he’d have seen its flesh melting into crude oil in seconds. As quick as it went alight, the fire ran out of fuel, leaving behind a twisted, blackened hunk.

He was shivering from the adrenaline rush, that particular kind of trembling that’s like a low-level current, all tensed muscles and wild eyes and ragged breathing. John stumbled back from the smoking carcass and wiped blood off his face with his shirt, staring first at the body then around at their surroundings to see if there were any others before turning to look at Dave. “You good?” 

“Just peachy,” Dave panted, and he truly did feel fine for the most part besides the fight-or-flight feeling, but then he saw John’s gaze drift to his side, blue eyes widening. He glanced down and realized, abruptly, that actually his side right under his ribcage was in agony, which made sense, as a dark red bloodstain was already spreading across his shirt. “Ah.” 

“That’s not good.” 

“No, it isn’t.” Dave considered lifting the shirt to look, but instead said, “We need to get back to the truck.” 

“Yeah.” John was still staring at it, jaw clenched, pale. Blood was trickling from a cut on his cheek that would need a bandaid at the very least. Dave turned around and started to walk (limp) back towards the car. He didn’t register falling over, but he felt John grab and lift him, shoving his shoulder under Dave’s armpit and wrapping both arms around his chest to haul him back up onto his feet, just like he did when Dave had had too many. They worked together to stumble back to the truck where Amy was waiting; on the way, Dave fished out of his pocket and handed to John the keys, knowing he definitely wouldn’t be able to drive. 

When they reached the truck, John pulled the door to the backseat open and started to push Dave into it, both gently and frantically. Amy gasped. “What happened?” 

“Just a scratch,” Dave answered as he did his best to climb into the truck. Amy helped pull him along. 

“We’re done here. We’re heading home.” John answered, shutting the door when Dave pulled his feet up out of the way.

“I’ll be fine,” Dave wheezed, moving to sit up properly, but Amy gently (but firmly) pulled him back down. In that time, John opened the front passenger door and climbed through it into the driver’s seat, starting the car up before even putting on his seatbelt. 

“David, no, don’t sit up.” She held him down with her right arm resting on his collarbones. “Just rest. Okay? For me?” 

He looked up, head in her lap, and saw actual worry in her eyes. He guessed he looked to be doing a lot worse than he actually was. “Alright.” The car took off and he shifted slightly, a little uncomfortable until he bent his knees and propped them against the opposite door. He lifted his hands to the injury and pressed on it as best he could. 

A silence settled as John continued to drive swiftly but relatively-smoothly away. Amy carded her fingers through Dave’s hair, not sure how else to comfort him. He wasn’t aware, whether it be because his standards for what’s Truly Bad were skewed or because of the blood loss, of just how bad-off he looked. Sweaty, bleeding heavily (onto the seats, too, which he wouldn’t be thrilled about) from the gash under his ribs, paler than ever. It terrified her, but she didn’t think it was a founded concern until she glanced up and saw the look of grim concentration on John’s face. If _he_ was worried about it, it was something to be worried about. 

For Dave’s part, he really wasn’t _there_ enough to be worried. Every blink felt like it took hours, and he was only vaguely aware of Amy’s hand in his hair. With each blink he got a different snapshot of her worried face; sometimes looking ahead, sometimes looking out the window, sometimes looking down at him. Eventually, one much-longer blink claimed him briefly, and when he came back he immediately knew he’d actually been unconscious. He mostly knew this because the car had stopped moving, but he definitely knew it when he heard hushed whispering above him. 

“...can’t just wake him up,” Amy was saying. 

“Well, we can’t just _leave_ him here, either,” John answered. Dave felt Amy’s hand in his hair again.

“Is it bad? I—I haven’t looked, I…” Amy winced. Dave forced his eyes open in time to see it.

“Well, let’s put it this way,” John answered, and Dave tried to direct his eyeballs over to him, “it isn’t _good_.” He was sitting the opposite way around in the driver’s seat, one leg up in the chair, tucked into his chest. He had one hand gripping the side of the seat, white-knuckled. It made the couple tattoos he had on his fingers stand out a little more. He glanced down and locked eyes with Dave, who, despite the blood-loss-stupor, noticed a marked difference in his voice when he gently said, “Hey, David. You alright?” 

“Nope.” Dave croaked. “Hurts.” Amy sniffled, and he turned his head back to look up at her. There were tears threatening at the corners of her eyes. Despite the wave of dizziness that moving his head had caused, he lifted one arm clumsily to hold her face. “It’s okay.” 

“Do you think you could stand?” John asked. 

Dave considered it for a moment. “...No.” He shut his eyes again. The light really hurt, for whatever reason. 

There was a pause, and Amy sniffled again. Then John said, “I have an idea.” 

Dave wasn’t sure if he passed out again for a moment, or if this plan was somehow conveyed entirely nonverbally to Amy, but the next thing he was aware of was the driver’s side door opening, and then shutting again, and then the door he’d been propping his feet up on swung open and his legs went limp. He could barely feel it, but he did hear the distinctive sound of John catching his legs. 

Amy tensed. “We have to get him to a hospital.”

Dave tried to say, _you don’t even have any idea if they could do anything for me, I’m not a human being anymore, remember?_ but all that came out was a slurred, “No, I’m—I’m not a person.” Amy shushed him.

“Yeah, I’m thinking you’re right,” he heard John say, and then he was out again. He only came back when he felt the door opposite Amy open again, and then hands wrapped around his legs, and his head fell when Amy slid out from under him. He felt himself getting dragged out of the car by his feet, and if he were conscious enough to do so, he’d probably have kicked out, so in retrospect, by his judgement, it was good that he was borderline comatose. He heard snippets of a brief argument over who should hold his head-end, and eventually he felt that strange shift in gravity that came from being lifted up. He definitely wasn’t very used to that; it jarred him fully awake for a moment. 

He opened his eyes and looked up right into John’s very sweaty, very worried, slightly bloodied face. “You look like hell,” he observed, then passed out again. 

He drifted back into reality in a hospital bed, and had to take five minutes to run through what the hell happened. He wasn’t aware of the fact that he’d actually done that six different times by now, of course, but he did notice, this time, that he had an I.V. of painkillers and a distinct stiff feeling to his side. Patched-up. But where were John and Amy? He looked around. The room was empty. It didn’t have any windows or a clock he could easily see, so he had no idea how long he’d been there or what time of day it was. 

He wondered, a bit anxiously, how the hell they’d afford this.

Eventually, some hospital staff came in to check him over—he supposed they had done so while he was unconscious, too—and asked if he wanted visitors, to which he of course said he did, figuring Amy and/or John were the visitors being referred to.

The fact it ended up being both of them was a bit of a pleasant surprise, and made him hopeful that he hadn’t been in there for too long. He sat up slightly, then winced, feeling stitches in his side pull uncomfortably. He’d just have to lie down, undignified though it might be. Either way, they both seemed too relieved to see him to care. He waved limply at them as they walked in, and he noticed John had a cotton ball taped to his cheekbone. He wondered if that scratch would leave a scar.

“How are you feeling?” Amy asked, gently brushing some of his very-unkempt hair out of his face. 

“Not great, but not terrible either. How long have I been here?” Her hand drifted to his cheek and he leaned into her touch without really thinking of it. 

“About a day, if that much. They’ll want to keep you longer—” 

He was already shaking his head. “There’s no way we can afford this.”

“Don’t worry about that.” John gently put a hand to his arm. 

“No, seriously, we don’t e—”

“ _Don’t worry about it_ ,” John interrupted pointedly. 

Dave locked eyes with him and the realization dawned on him in a wave of guilt. “You—”

“It’s okay.”

“John, you can’t! I—No. I can’t do that to you—” 

“David,” Amy butted in, gently taking hold of his hand, “it’s okay, really.” 

John ruffled a hand through his hair, disrupting whatever order Amy had put into it. “All this was kinda my fault, anyways. It’s the least I can do.” Then, he did as he does best in serious situations: he changed the subject to something more lighthearted. “Plus, you’re gonna have a cool-ass scar now. If you _really_ wanna pay me back, tell everybody I saved your life. And make me sound like a total badass. Which is the truth, by the way. I’m a total badass.”

“He cried when he thought you were gonna die.”

“Badasses can still cry!” John spoke with an air of confidence but his face reddened slightly.


	8. Almost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little too close. Happens probably very shortly after JDatE, maybe the summer after the end of the book or smth.
> 
> very inspired by this twitter thread https://twitter.com/givemeabrekk/status/1272670125599215616 i am very gay and it very much made me feel things also i wrote this at like 2-3am wahoo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hurt/comfort, blood/injury, much romantic-or-something tension, implied-to-be-one-sided pining that may not be one-sided after all, implied relationships

John hissed, a quick inhale through clenched teeth, air whistling through the gaps made from countless years of needing orthodontia and doing stupid shit, and he screwed his face up with the effort of not yelping as Dave poked at one of his numerous new injuries with a peroxide-soaked cotton ball. Dave didn’t even apologize, either, too busy glaring down at John’s arms like they’ve offended him as he did his best to mop up the dried blood and stop whatever trickles of blood were still issuing from the various cuts, gouges, and claw-marks all over him. 

They were at John’s house, simply because it was closer to where they’d been than Dave’s house, in his bathroom, with John sitting on the edge of the bathtub and Dave kneeling on the tile before him, using the closed toilet lid as a table for the opened first aid kit. John had initially said he would patch himself up, but Dave had vetoed that notion with a snappish, “Shut up, shitbird, you’re always terrible at it.” And he wasn’t wrong—John usually just put paper towels or something over the worst wounds, ‘til they stopped bleeding, and stuck bandaids on the smaller ones. He rarely ever cleaned them up like Dave was doing, just ran water over them. It hadn’t killed him to-date and he’d never gotten any terrible infections, so he didn’t really understand all the fuss, but he knew Dave was already pissed at him for the stunt he’d pulled, so he didn’t argue. He didn’t like it when Dave was quiet and angry like this. Angry-yelling Dave he could handle, much as he hated to, but angry-quiet Dave was just frightening. It felt like there was a lot happening in Dave’s head that he couldn’t read.

They continued in an uncomfortable silence for a few moments before John decided to break the tension, or at least try to. “Man, this is like… when I was in the second grade, I tried to do a double-backflip off the monkey bars, because that’s fucking dope, right?” Dave grunted in agreement. “Except there was this tree that was kinda near the monkey bars, and it was just, _really_ _pointy,_ I guess. So of course I smacked into the lower-hanging branches, fucked up my flip, and landed face-first in the mulch. Just, covered in all kinds of cuts and scrapes. So I got hauled off to the nurse and she patched me up all nice and until then I had kinda forgot that that’s what you’re supposed to do for a kid who gets hurt.” 

“Think that level of stupid carried over into adulthood.” Dave commented, a little bit more harshly than he’d intended. John didn’t take too much offense. If Dave truly didn’t care, he wouldn’t be pouring peroxide on a lump of cotton and dabbing it cautiously along John’s arm, after all. 

“Sure seems like it, huh,” John mumbled. Dave sighed and shook his head, snagging John’s wrist with his free hand to twist his arm a little, for easier access. John glanced down. He was never really bothered by the sight of his own blood, but he was pretty surprised that he wasn’t dizzy from the amount he’d bled out already. A good portion of his entire upper body was all scratched-up and bleeding yet he felt totally fine, other than a bit of pain. It could just be shock, though.

“You… you _have_ to not do this, anymore,” Dave said, digging through the bandages for one big enough to cover a particularly wide (but thankfully shallow) scrape. “You can’t keep sprinting headfirst into this bullshit without any kind of plan or idea of what you’re running at or even waiting for me. I’m serious. You cut that shit out now before you end up hurt worse than this, or _dead_. I’m not carting your corpse home. I… can’t.” He sighed, carefully unwrapping the bandaid before positioning it. “You’re _not_ fucking indestructible, regardless of whatever goddamned _god complex_ you’ve got or whatever; one of these days your stupid eternally-good luck will run dry and then you’ll be _fucked_.” The more he talked the more John could unravel his anger; he could tell Dave was exhausted, still wired from the adrenaline, and… afraid. But it was easier to be angry than scared. 

His voice was a little hoarse. John remembered the absolute fucking _intensity_ Dave had screeched his name with when that monster started laying into him with its claws. If he’d been less lucky, and Dave less inclined to tackle the goddamned thing, he might’ve even been disemboweled tonight. He really could've died. That was a sobering thought. 

Dave kept going with his lecture, but John wasn’t paying attention to the words. The divide between the energy of his voice and the tenderness of his hands as they gently held onto John’s arms, dabbed at wounds, pressed bandages where necessary, was almost mesmerizing, somehow. Dave wasn’t usually gentle, ever—awkward and clumsy, yes, trying his best _not_ to be either of those things, yes, but _gentle_ was something John had only seen him be with Amy, really, when she threw up on herself that one time. That was after he was Monster Dave, so, technically never in the original Dave’s life had he been this… sweet.

John started to tap his foot on the floor, uncomfortable. 

See, despite the whole monster-fighting thing often having them in close-quarters situations, they didn’t really spend extended periods of time this close, and they certainly didn’t spend this much time touching each other while doing so. It’s not like it _wasn’t_ perfectly normal, in a sense, you know; they often did the just-two-bros-patching-each-other-up thing, but what _wasn’t_ quite so normal was the fact that John had, up until this very moment, really thought he’d suppressed his crush on Dave pretty well. He barely ever thought of it nowadays, because he’d been quashing those feelings since Dave was with Jen, and practice makes perfect. But with Dave right there, right in his personal space, so gently touching him and so intensely scolding him for being stupid and getting himself hurt, _because Dave **cared** and didn’t want to see him hurt _ _or, worse yet, lose him_ , and _he only sounded angry because he was worried_ … It felt like the door had been unlocked and those same _please for the love of god **just kiss me**_ feelings rushed right back in. A tidal wave of everything he’d been struggling to simply deal with on his own, out of respect for Dave (and Jen and Amy), swept over him and he was just staring, and he couldn’t stop staring, and he knew in the back of his mind what the look on his face said but he was just so lost in it he didn’t even care. 

Until Dave glanced up and trailed off mid-sentence, locking eyes with John. For a few seconds John was still in that haze, just staring directly into Dave’s dark brown eyes and thinking about how pretty they looked, what with the rounded little bathroom lights reflected in them and those lighter flecks of hazel near the pupils, a little ring that reflected light oddly, almost glowing. Dave always described his eyes and his hair and his face and his _everything_ as plain, ugly, and boring, but it really wasn’t. It sounded creepy to say, but John had kind of watched him a little, before they became friends, and Dave was that kind of ‘average’ that just got more appealing the more you got to know him. A just-right sort of average. He wasn’t eye-catching until it all shifted when you _knew_ him, when you saw him in a certain light, like when he was laughing at a joke so hard he could almost piss himself or when he got that really determined look on his face—or right now, when he was staring directly into John’s eyes with an expression that was a mixture of surprise and sharp focus. 

Then John snapped out of the fog and felt his heart suddenly start racing again. This definitely wasn’t normal. Dave was definitely thinking he’d lost his fucking mind to be giving him a stare like that, and _shit_ , he could’ve just ruined _everything_ , and with that thought the air suddenly felt very, very tense. What was Dave going to do? Was he going to be disgusted? Confused? John hadn’t exactly told him he had no preferences gender-wise, and Dave rarely if ever asked about John’s relationships, if only because John really wasn’t a fan of anything that constituted a ‘real’ relationship—he’d only ever actually thought about it with Dave, funny enough—and Dave wasn’t the kind of guy who asked about random hookups, nor was John the kind of braggart who was specific. It was entirely possible Dave would just be baffled and John could pass it off as thinking about some girl to save his neck here.

Dave’s eyes flicked down to John’s mouth and he felt his whole chest tighten. He swallowed roughly and suddenly was acutely aware of Dave’s hands still on his arm, left holding it steady, right pressing its palm over a paper towel to stymie the blood still oozing out of one really-quite-terrible slash. The moment he was aware of it, though, he felt like electricity raced up his spine. He shivered almost imperceptibly. He was barely aware of their faces inching closer until he realized he could feel Dave’s breath on his face. It smelled like that red Mountain Dew he always drank for some godforsaken reason and John fleetingly wondered if his own breath smelled like that unbearable cheap beer that he really only drank because it got him the most drunk for the least amount of money. His heart was hammering faster than when he’d thought he was going to die, to the point where he almost wondered if Dave could hear it. He was so close now, eyes almost entirely shut, hovering mere millimeters away from John’s face and it was taking all of his restraint not to fucking _pounce_ on this opportunity— 

Dave’s phone buzzed and they both flinched, hard, spell broken immediately. Dave pulled back and tugged his phone from his pocket, frowning in confusion. John wanted to scream but sighed silently instead, tension dissolving but his heart rate still through the roof. 

“It’s Amy.” Dave set the phone down. “...I’ll call her back later.” 

John nodded. Amy, of course, yeah. Dave’s girlfriend. Who wouldn’t be very happy about what just almost happened, John suspected. He was almost glad she called; it was like a sign or something. A reminder. This wouldn’t be right; besides, John cared too much about Amy and knew it would leave Dave just guilt-stricken. He looked down. “Good idea.” He nodded, rubbing his hands together aimlessly before lifting his head again.

Dave glanced back up, and they locked eyes again for a second, silent understanding passing between them. They weren’t ever going to talk about what just almost happened.

But holy shit, John was never going to forget that.


	9. Panic Attack

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's been a while since John had a panic attack.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> obviously tw for panic attacks, and very-vaguely-implied self harm. not necessarily john/dave/amy but it could be implied. sorta emotional hurt/comfort. this is Another one that just kinda possessed me at 2am and wouldnt fuck off til i wrote n polished it enjoy

John hadn’t had a panic attack in years, but it was a feeling he’d never forget. It was kind of his fault, this time—staying up so many days in a row with so much caffeine and other shit was definitely poking the bear, and he knew it. Still, he hadn’t been expecting it, and he hadn’t even realized what was happening until his chest felt like it was being crushed and his head was absolutely spinning. Every dark spot in his house looked like a monster; something he knew too well or something he didn’t want to ever know, and to be fair, in his line of work, it wouldn’t be unusual for the darkness in his house to suddenly morph into living beings that wanted to kill him. That fact just sent him even further over the edge and he was stumbling upstairs, breathing heavily, before he really knew what he was doing. He slammed the bathroom door and locked it behind him, then clambered into his (empty) bathtub, still clothed.

He knew who to call when shit hit the fan. Back pressed to the corner of the tub, he fumbled with his pockets for a moment before yanking his phone out and, with unsteady hands, dialling Dave, which is to say, he mashed down on “1” on his speed dial and it called Dave for him. He pressed the phone to his face like the harder he smushed it into his cheek the better it would calm him down. He tried to force his breathing to be more even as he heard the phone ring once, twice, then—

“What do you want?” A very groggy, grouchy Dave asked. 

John tried to be normal for a moment. “Hey, man,” his voice wobbled and cracked, and he coughed, embarrassed.

“John?” Dave’s tone shifted to something closer to worried.

John broke down. “I-I’m freaking out, dude. I don’t know. My heart is way too fucking fast—”

“Where are you?” Dave sounded much more awake now. There was some movement in the background. 

“At home. In the bathroom. I locked myself in the bathroom. There’s nothing—It’s just me.” He couldn’t spit words out fast enough between his chattering teeth but he needed Dave to know it wasn’t an actual _monster_ attack. 

“Okay. I’m on my way over, alright? I’ll be there soon.” The words were reassuring despite Dave’s tone being its usual flat tiredness. 

“Okay.” John clenched his free hand and watched it shake, felt his nails dig into his palm. It grounded him but he knew relying on that pain wouldn’t lead to good things. He didn't need more scars.

Dave’s voice broke in again, jarring him. “Do you want me to stay on the line?” 

It wasn’t even a question for John. “Yes.” 

“Alright.” Then he heard a little shuffling. John started spacing out again, staring straight ahead at his knees and the rim of the tub but not really seeing it. It was just visual noise. After a moment or two he heard muffled talking—probably Dave telling Amy what was going on—before Dave’s voice came back again. “Hey, John? Is it okay if Amy’s there, too?”

John struggled to think. He didn’t really want anybody but Dave to see him like this, but at the same time, he did trust Amy. He knew she wouldn’t pity him or look at him differently afterward. Same as Dave. The way he asked implied she was asking to tag along. “Yeah.” 

“Alright. We’re on our way. Don’t hang up, man.” 

* * *

They showed up some time later, thankfully not very long. Dave kept talking to him, saying things John really wasn’t processing, and sometimes Amy chimed in, too, which was nice. Dave told him when they were at the front door, and he heard them unlock it, entering his house and heading up the stairs. They only hung up once they were outside the bathroom door, and Dave gently rapped on it twice with his knuckles. “Hey,” he called, voice muffled through the door, “can you unlock the door for us?” 

John thought about standing up, and considered how dizzy he already was from hyperventilating, how unsafe he’d feel the moment his back wasn’t pressed up against something, and struggled to respond. “I. I can’t.” 

Dave huffed, but not in an exasperated way, more a shit-this-is-worse-than-I-thought way. John heard Amy say something, then Dave responded with something that sounded like “Isn’t that a little unethical?” followed by Amy shushing him, and then the doorknob was gently wiggling a bit and John figured out what they were doing. In a moment or two it clicked, then there was a bit of shuffling and the door eased open, a bobby pin stuck in the locking mechanism. Dave leaned into the room and spotted John. He didn’t at all seem phased by where John was sitting. “Hey, dude.” 

John nodded just to let Dave know he could hear and understand him. He couldn’t speak, as he was still struggling to breathe normally. Dave cautiously approached, like he was walking up to a baby deer he expected to run away but really wanted to pet. John didn’t move, or tell him to fuck off, so Dave slowed to a stop right in front of the bathtub. “You gotta get up, man…” Dave started, but John shook his head vehemently. He was not going to be able to move anytime soon. Dave paused for a moment, considering, looking John over with that how-can-I-solve-this-problem look, and then he asked, “Can I join you?” John nodded again, and Dave stepped into the tub to sit down next to him. John immediately leaned into him, which Dave understood was his way of asking for a hug, so he tossed one arm behind John, looping the other around the front of him to manage an awkward side-hug. The tub was cramped, John was already practically curled into a ball, and Dave definitely didn’t fit very easily ordinarily. He wasn’t really as compact-able as John. It wasn’t going to be the most elegant or comfortable arrangement.

Amy gingerly nudged the door open with her foot, blanket in hand. Dave nodded to her; John wasn’t paying attention. She approached gingerly, then carefully draped it over him, and at first he flinched, startled by the sudden sensory input, but when he saw it was her he relaxed a little. She knelt down on the tile floor in front of the tub while Dave adjusted the blanket a bit. He then gently patted John on the shoulder. “We’re here. You’re alright. You should know I’ll shoot whatever would try to attack us _right_ in the fuckin’ face.”

John chuckled, feeling a little bit of the tension ease. He was still frightened, of course, for (near as he could tell) no good reason, but it felt better to have company. And to have someone holding him. He pressed into Dave’s side. 

Dave knew, from experience, that asking John what was wrong wouldn’t work. If there wasn’t anything that caused it, then John just couldn’t answer, and if there was, talking about it before he’d calmed down would just wind him up even more. So Dave turned to Amy, and began, “What was that Dungeons & Dragons thing you brought up yesterday?” 

At first it was just Dave and Amy talking, doing their best to pretend John’s quietness wasn’t deeply unnerving, though Amy did keep a careful watch on him in a looking-out-of-the-corner-of-her-eyes sort of way. The casual energy of the conversation, as if they weren’t all huddled in the corner of John’s bathroom at four in the morning, helped to ease the fear. The air slowly lightened as time went on. The banter was a welcome distraction for John, and it felt like the fear was draining from him, but a bit like sludge. Not an all-at-once sort of drain, like popping a hole in a balloon, but more like pouring half-hardened caramel out of a bowl. He relaxed, slowly but surely, sort of melting into Dave as he did so, resting his head on Dave’s shoulder. By the time he stopped shivering, he was even contributing to conversation a little here and there. It must have been closer to six in the morning by the time he finally felt normal, albeit quite drained, and he finally said, “The couch would probably have been way more comfortable than this.”

“For sure. Try to schedule your panic attacks to happen in comfier spots, John.” Dave gave his shoulder a light squeeze to let John know he was just kidding. 

“No promises,” John smiled a little. “I think I’m good now, though.”

He moved to stand up, and Dave went with him, keeping one arm around his shoulders. “Thank god. I think my legs were falling asleep.” 

“Not my fault you’re not the standard size for a bathtub.” 

This was their routine; not even a five-minute break before they started gently ribbing each other again. For John’s part, it felt something like proving he was above whatever was bothering him, whether it be a rational or irrational sort of meltdown. The anxiety couldn’t do shit to John when he knew that Dave could say, with love, some of the meanest things. When he was clever enough to think of them, anyway. 

They clambered out of the tub (Amy offering an arm of support when Dave realized one of his legs was definitely _very_ asleep), shaking life back into their legs, and filed out of the bathroom. John led the way back downstairs, figuring the other two would probably want to go home, and he’d just either wipe out on the couch or make some coffee to stay up ’til sunrise. When they reached the bottom of the stairs he waited until both Dave and Amy were on the landing before saying, “You guys can go home, if you want. I’m alright now.” 

The two exchanged a look. “Are you sure, John?” Amy asked slowly, and now it was John’s turn to hesitate. To be honest, he didn’t really want them to go. He didn’t want to be alone again, but he didn’t know how to ask them to stay, either. He also didn’t really know how to accept them staying, anyways. 

Dave either picked up on that, or actually wanted to stay, because he said, “You know we’d be more than happy to spend the night, dude.” 

John shuffled his feet. “Well, I mean—If you’d, uh, _want_ to—” 

Dave glanced to Amy, who nodded, smiling at John. “Of course. Hang on.” She then turned and stepped out the front door, and Dave stared aimlessly into the living room as John drew the blanket around his shoulders.

“…Thank you.” John mumbled. 

Dave looked back over at him. “What are friends for?” 

John couldn’t resist a sly little smile. “Usually, getting into life-or-death scenarios, honestly.” 

Dave snickered. Amy stepped back in, shutting the front door behind her, orthopedic pillow tucked under one arm. It occurred to John, seeing that, that it might’ve been their plan to stay the night all along. Either that, or they just accounted for the possibility. “It’s raining out,” she said, and indeed, she was a little bit damp. 

“Shit, really?” He looked a little regretful, like if he’d known he wouldn’t have let her go out in it.

“It’s just sprinkling,” she elaborated, shrugging. “It’ll probably rain more later, though. Just means staying is even more of a good idea.” Amy didn’t much like being in a car at night in the rain. It was difficult to see at night ordinarily; the rain made it worse. She didn’t like being unable to see if they’d hit anything. 

Dave nodded. “Yeah, good call.” 

Amy walked past them, toward the living room, and John followed her, Dave bringing up the rear with a quick glance out the living room window to see the rain drizzling down the windowpane. John settled into the couch first, trying to figure out how best they could all pile onto it and also sleep. He entertained the idea of inviting them to his bed, but felt that would probably give the wrong idea, and besides, he didn’t feel like moving the dirty clothes off of it. On the other hand, it might be a good idea for Amy’s back… 

But he didn’t really have the balls to suggest it.

Dave flopped down beside him with a sigh, stretching his legs out for a moment. Amy set down her pillow, strategically, then situated herself properly on it, leaning against Dave. John pulled the blanket off his shoulders and passed it to Dave, who drew the blanket up over all three of them while they were getting themselves situated all nice and cosy. John didn’t even realize how tired he was until then, until the adrenaline was finally entirely gone and he was somewhere comfortable. Safe, even. He figured any weird shit that happened would have Dave up and running and swinging his fists or whatever was in arms’ reach before he could even wake up all the way. He remembered Amy describing the way he shot out of bed and nabbed that crossbow. Yeah, they were both safe with Dave, at least as safe as they could be. He shifted a bit to be more on the couch, pulling his knees in closer to his chest and leaning on Dave. He half expected Dave to nudge him off or make some kind of no-homo remark, but Dave instead shifted to dig one arm behind John, letting him in a bit closer. Being in the middle really gave him the shortest end of the stick here, but it’s not like all three of them could lie down on the couch, and Dave was arguably the most used to sleeping sitting upright. If Dave minded, he’d say so, but he didn’t, and John was far too tired to be polite. He shut his eyes, lifting his head for a second, turning it, then pressing it into Dave, the maneuver making a little pillow out of his hair, in a way. John fell asleep curled up and leaning into Dave, head resting on Dave’s shoulder. 

Dave shifted a little bit, trying to get more comfortable, and draped his other arm over Amy. She reached behind her and pushed the pillow over to a better spot, then nestled into his side. For a moment, she laid there, listening to Dave’s heartbeat and thinking over what had just happened. She hadn’t seen John that panicked—at least not outwardly, obviously so—ever before, and it had been a little frightening. She thought something bad was happening until Dave quietly explained to her that it sounded like there wasn’t, that she didn’t need to prepare for a fight or anything, and she caught on that Dave probably knew more of what was going on than she did. For her part, Amy was almost surprised that Dave had handled this so smoothly. She didn’t exactly think he wouldn’t be able to, of course, just, she wasn’t used to seeing him _immediately_ know what to do. It was like he was following a script of some kind, and it was almost fascinating, to a degree. “Can I ask something?” Amy whispered, and when Dave gave her his raised-eyebrows, please-go-on look, she continued, “Is this… normal for him? Like, has this happened before?” 

“Been a while since I heard him _that_ panicked,” Dave explained softly, “but sometimes, yeah. He’ll be okay, though.” 

Amy nodded. She understood; this was probably something that had always been a facet of their friendship. She knew of course that John would talk Dave down off the edge but she hadn’t realized that was kind of a two-way street, even if this was probably way less frequent than Dave’s almost-falling-off-a-cliff moments. She snuggled into Dave’s other side, adjusting her pillow, and shut her eyes. “I’m glad he’ll be okay.” 

Dave glanced over at John and, for the first time in a while, wondered if he really would be okay. “…Yeah.”


	10. Other World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> or, I Have Some Weird Ideas About The Soy Sauce.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> john/dave, implied unrequited love, Very Really Short compared to the other stuff in this collection. no warnings on this one, nobody gets hurt.
> 
> this ones real fuckin stupid, tho.

John’s eyes slid open to a bedroom he did and didn’t recognize. He intrinsically knew it was _his_ space, registering it as his bedroom, but it was completely different from the bedroom he knew. He took a deep breath, stretched, and became aware of an arm draped over his torso, a familiar arm whose owner he knew and loved very much. The arm shifted, dragging across his chest to pull him closer, and he grinned reflexively. 

“Morning, Dave,” he heard himself say, and that really threw him for a loop. That was Dave? What the hell was _Dave_ doing in his bed? Yet it felt entirely normal, at the same time. Of course it was Dave. This was _their_ bed.

He felt a stubbly chin squish into his shoulder. “Morning, John.” For some reason just simply hearing his voice evoked a rush of fondness, and he turned to toss an arm over Dave as well, finally getting a decent look at him. He looked almost well-rested for once, content, with some serious bedhead. His eyes lit up when they made eye contact. John saw himself reach over and card his fingers through the front part of his hair, leaving it sticking up like some kind of ridiculous parody of anime hair. He then leaned forward and gently pressed his lips to Dave’s forehead for a second and when he pulled away Dave was smiling. “Knock it off.”

“Knock _what_ off?” John felt that this was routine, an every-morning ritual he’d gotten used to long ago. 

“Being all cute and shit.” He felt Dave’s hand lift and his fingers card through his long hair, and it felt wonderful. “Not allowed.” 

“Add it to my charges, officer.” He grinned. Dave snorted, shaking his head. “We should probably get up now.”

Dave sighed, hand planting in John’s hair, and nestled into his shoulder. “Five more minutes?” 

“Five more minutes,” John agreed, letting his eyes slide shut again and knowing full well it would be much more than five minutes. 

* * *

John snapped awake, groggy and full of some very conflicting feelings. He blinked at the ceiling for a second, sorting himself out. What the hell had _that_ dream been? Was it one of those effects of the Soy Sauce wearing off? It felt so real, but that same sort of surreal-real the Soy Sauce visions had, where he knew he was there but yet he wasn’t at the same time. It did and didn’t exist. 

Things like that had actually been happening for a little while now. Dreams that felt like someone else’s memories, someone else’s evening or morning playing out behind his eyelids. Like he was getting to peer into an alternate reality. That was what he’d concluded, anyways. He was pretty sure he was just seeing another John’s life, thanks to the Soy Sauce, for whatever fucking reason. 

And that last one had him… pretty shaken, actually. 

It wasn’t the first time he’d peered into a reality where there was some _unusual_ shit going on, but it was the first time it had been that… soft. The first time he’d woken up from it and immediately felt that ‘aw, fuck, it wasn’t real’ disappointment. Usually he just thought ‘man, the fuck was that?’ and moved on with his day. But today he laid in bed, alone, staring at the ceiling, and he felt like he could still sense Dave’s arms around him, breath on his shoulder, and the fact that he actually couldn’t had him feeling weirdly empty. And feeling like he needed to call Dave and tell him, because being able to slip into an alternate universe in your dreams was pretty cool and, hey, wouldn’t this make for a fun story? 

He probably would have, too, if he wasn’t still reeling from it. 

He shut his eyes, chasing that sensation again. It was nice, honestly, to know that some alternate version of himself could be that content. Was it weird to be jealous of yourself? He felt a little jealous of that John. He wasn’t sure if it was just because that John felt safe and happy or if it was because that John was sharing a bed with Dave, and, strictly for the sake of his own friendship with Dave, he wasn’t going to dwell on it.

But it was definitely a combination of the two.

He decided, as he got up, that he wouldn’t tell Dave about it until something less-incriminating happened. He was fairly sure if he tried to articulate this incident his envy would show through, and that raised a lot of questions he knew Dave wouldn’t like the answers to. Answers he was pretty determined to keep to himself 'til he died, unless and until something drastically weird happened. 


	11. John Has A Pool Now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Title is self-explanatory. No warnings needed, this one's also just fuckin' stupid.

Summer in Undisclosed this year was the absolute worst. Or at least it _felt_ like the worst. It felt hot enough to melt the license plate off a car, or liquify the pavement. Stepping outside for five minutes in the sun was enough to make you feel like your very skin would catch on fire. So of course, neither Dave nor Amy were exactly in their most sane mindset when John called them to tell them he just got a pool and they should all come try it out. Hell, Dave didn’t even ask where the hell he got it or how he filled it, he just heard ‘pool’ and thought ‘cold water would be really nice right now’ and said “Sure thing, man.” Then he and Amy both tore up the apartment for about ten minutes looking for their swimsuits (or, well, Dave had to tear the apartment up looking for his swim trunks, Amy actually knew where her suit was because she had some semblance of organization in her) and other pool shit (Amy remembered sunscreen, Dave remembered towels) before heading for John’s house. 

The car ride over was sweltering in the most unpleasant way. The AC couldn’t even begin to start working, it was that hot (and Dave’s car was that shitty), so they just sweated their way over to John’s absolutely-ridiculous all-black house. When they stepped up to the front door, Dave eyed John’s ‘security system’ and thought about how the fire it was rigged to shoot out might actually be colder than the air around them. 

John answered the door with a huge grin and a towel hanging on his shoulder. “You made it!” He stepped back to let them in. 

“Yep! We managed to _not_ catch fire on the way here, miraculously,” Amy responded as she walked in, Dave in tow.

“Despite the sun’s best fuckin’ efforts.” Dave huffed, shutting the door behind him. It was, gloriously, much cooler in John’s house, or at least in the downstairs portion of it. 

“Well, good news! The pool is out back and entirely ready-to-go,” John was already headed for the back door. Dave and Amy followed, a bit more slowly, if only to appreciate the air conditioning for just a little while longer. 

They stepped out into John’s backyard and paused to take in the sight of the pool. It was small; Dave would be surprised if it was more than ten feet wide, and a bit of a weird shape. It kind of looked like a factory reject, actually, which would make the duct tape patches along the sides make a lot of sense.

“ _Pool?”_ Dave eyed it. “Dude, this is an over-glorified _bathtub_.” 

Amy shrugged. “Hey, it’s water.”

“And it’s cold! For now. Come on!” John plunked into it with a splash, sending water over its plastic sides. It rose up to his chest. Shallow enough for all three to stand in comfortably, which was good, because Amy didn’t swim. 

Dave sighed inwardly. He had a point, and Dave had honestly been expecting the ‘pool’ to be a giant hole in John’s backyard or something, not a real aboveground pool. “Good point.” He started to head over.

“No, come here, put on some sunscreen.” Amy waved the bottle at him, and he came back over. He was definitely pale enough to warrant it, despite usually forgetting. “Here, I’ll get your back. Turn around.” 

He complied, and shivered a bit at how cold the sunscreen felt. It was refreshing, for sure, but there’s nothing pleasant about someone slapping a bunch of cold goop on your skin. Particularly since, through no fault of her own of course, Amy had to pour the sunscreen on him and then spread it around with her one hand. He wasn’t about to complain, though, given he couldn’t reach his own back and he knew John would do something stupid, like pour a bunch in one hand then slap him on the back with it. (Sadly, he knew that one from experience.)

“Alright, there you go.” She announced, and he turned around to take the bottle of sunscreen from her. “Don’t forget your face.” She reached up and booped him right on the nose, leaving behind a smear of sunscreen, the last that was left on her hand.

He flinched just a little bit, not having expected that, then snickered. “Thanks. Here, I’ll get your back.” She turned, and Dave gently rubbed sunscreen on her shoulders. From the pool, John wolf-whistled at them, and Dave shot him a dark look. “You’re lucky you’re not in smacking distance, John.” 

Amy giggled as John stuck out his tongue then sank out of view briefly, bobbing in the water. “When are you two gonna get in here? I’m lonely.” 

“Chill out, we’re on our way,” Amy laughed. 

Dave gently swiped the last of the sunscreen across the space between her shoulder blades. “Good to go.” 

“Thanks, David.” She answered warmly, then pranced over to the pool. “I really hope you’re not lying about it being cold, John.” Dave followed behind her, a bit warily.

“Definitely not. I’d be shivering if it weren’t so hot out. It’s like an ice bath.” 

Amy stepped in and yelped. “Oh, geez, he’s not kidding.”

“Sounds ideal.” Dave climbed the little ladder behind her. 

The water was amazingly, refreshingly cold. It likely wouldn’t stay that way for long, but while it did, Dave was going to enjoy it. He sighed, bending his knees a bit to sink up to his neck in it. Amy, on the other hand, stood on her tip-toes, shivering and cold. She didn’t have nearly as much insulation as Dave did (as she would put it, too kindly), so no amount of the bright, harsh sunlight would counterbalance how cold the water felt for her. She was more than willing to wait for it to warm up a little, though, so she stayed put.

“Nice, right?” John leaned back, floating.

“Yeah.” Dave shut his eyes for a second, blissful.

Silence lapsed for a long moment, during which Amy adjusted to the cold and stopped shivering. It was a quiet day, the loudest sounds being the birds arguing as they flitted from rooftop to rooftop in John’s neighborhood. Every now and then a car drove by. Beyond that, it was calm.

Briefly.

“Dave,” John started, sidling closer to him. Dave eyed him, immediately suspicious, but didn’t say anything. “Isn’t it nice out today?”

“No. It’s hotter than Satan’s asscrack.” Dave leaned slightly away from him. Despite being in essentially a cold bath, he was still sweating.

John didn’t let Dave’s discomfort deter him. Dave was too focused on the fact that John’s face was far too close for his liking to see John’s arm slowly drifting behind him. “You know, if you’re still hot, there’s an easy fix for that—”

Dave started to say, “I don’t know what joke you’re setting up, but—” 

Unfortunately before Dave could finish his thought, John’s hand snapped up from the water, grabbed hold of Dave’s head, and slammed it under the water.

“ _John_ ,” Amy started to reprimand, stifling her laughter, but before she could, Dave erupted back up to the surface. John was starting to step back, but before he even shook the water out of his eyes, Dave whipped his hand out and shoved John under. Then he backed away, shook his hair out and wiped the water off his face, snickering, and Amy could see he was actually smiling. John popped back up, laughing, and dragged his hair out of his face, blinking water off his eyelashes.

“Cooler, right?”

“Go fuck yourself,” Dave laughed. John wasn’t wrong, of course, but dunking him was a dick move, and he knew it. 

* * *

Even though the water cooled them down, it couldn’t take away the harsh-glare aspect of the sun. John was fairly used to it, and even he had to narrow his eyes a little, nose wrinkling as he did so. He tried, at one point, to make a hat brim out of his wet hair, with hilarious blonde-version-of-that-girl-from-The-Ring results. It did not at all work the way he’d hoped but they all got a good laugh at it.

Dave, least-acclimated to bright light of the three of them, scrunched his whole face up as he squinted. “Ugh. I should’ve brought sunglasses.” 

“You can borrow those tinted goggles I have,” John offered.

He shook his head. “Nah, I’m not doing that again. I looked stupid.” 

“You never look stupid, Dave,” John rebutted gently.

At the same time, Amy said, “Babe, you always look stupid.” 

Dave snorted. “Conflicting opinions here.” 

Amy looped her arms around his shoulders. “You know I love you. Even when you look stupid. Actually, especially when you look stupid. It’s cute.” 

Dave laughed, lifting one arm to hold her, and rolled his eyes. “Yeah, alright.” 

“She has a point, Dave! There _is_ a certain clueless-puppy kind of appeal to you looking stupid. Like putting people-clothes on a dog. You’re _lucky_ you look stupid so often.” 

Dave smacked a wave of water at him and he ducked away, laughing, wiping water off his face. 

* * *

Eventually the water reached more of a just-barely-below-body-temperature coldness, and they decided it was about time to get out and have some food. John in particular claimed he was “positively ravenous,” which was definitely a phrase he picked up from _somewhere_ but he wouldn’t disclose where. Dave wouldn’t protest food and Amy agreed that they’d spent enough time in the pool and dinner would be pretty nice. 

They went in after they’d mostly dried-off, and the air conditioning inside was refreshingly frigid, something John announced immediately with a whoop, tossing his towel on a chair. Neither Dave nor Amy wanted to relinquish that one layer and kept theirs wrapped around them. Amy shivered a little. 

John opened the freezer by staying the hell out of the doorway and reaching around the open door to paw around for the box, which was pretty hilarious to watch from the side of the door that he wasn’t on. He eventually found it, and with a triumphant little “aha!” he pulled it out of the freezer and slammed that shit shut before his hand would freeze off. “Probably should’ve gotten more than one, with the way we go through these,” he remarked, as if just now realizing.

Dave shrugged as John started up his oven. “It’ll be fine.” 

“Oh! I have popcorn. That’ll do. Right?” John straightened up and opened a cabinet, pawing past some boxes and pulling out a popcorn package. 

“Just remember to take the plastic off this time.” 

“What, you didn’t like that little flavour enhancement?” John grinned at him, fumbling a little with the cellophane wrapper. After a second he frowned down at it, not entirely sure why he couldn’t open it, and right as Amy was going to ask if he needed help he lifted it to his face and tore through it with his teeth. “I should staple knives to the ends of my fingers so I can open this shit.” 

Amy snorted. “Somehow, I don’t think that would work in the long run.” 

“I could be Edward Scissorhands’ less emo cousin,” John grinned. “John Knifefingers. Though, it’d be pretty inconvenient for the ladies.” 

“John, shut up.” Dave did not want him to go off on that tangent. 

“You don’t have to tape knives to _all_ your fingers,” Amy pointed out with a giggle as Dave gave her an exasperated don't-encourage-him look. 

John pointed to her. “Good point!” The oven beeped to let them know it had preheated enough. John nudged the pizza into the oven, peering at it. “I think we could, maybe, just put this thing on the pavement outside, and it’d cook just as well if not _better_ than it’s about to.”

“I’m not gonna eat pavement pizza.” Amy replied. 

John glanced to Dave, who shrugged and said, “I’m not picky, but what she says goes.” 

John shook his head and chuckled. “I’d say ‘you’re so whipped’ if that wasn’t such a terrible joke to make.”

“Wow, a joke even _you_ won’t make? Be still, my beating heart.”

“Someone contact Guinness Book of World Records,” Amy chimed in.

John shut the oven door after one final glance. “I love you guys.” 

“What terrible movie are we watching this time?” Amy carded her fingers through her still-wet hair, brushing it off the back of her neck for a moment. 

“I found something _so_ bad, the lead actor had it scrubbed from his iMDB page,” John answered with a grin. 

“Sounds promising,” Dave commented.

John nodded gleefully. “In just the _worst_ way. I’ve got two others, too, but they’re less-shitty, so, we’ll watch them after that one. You know, to ease the pain.” 

“Great.” 

* * *

They settled in on the couch, pizza on the coffee table in front of them, popcorn bowl in Dave’s lap, a package of Oreos ready for after the pizza—all prepared for a shitty-movie marathon. Amy snuggled in close to Dave, pizza in hand, while John, on Dave’s other side, tried to force his remote to work, peering at it and smacking it against his leg before Dave wordlessly lifted his hand, palm-up. John gave the remote to him, and Dave whacked it against his own leg once before pressing the power button on it. The TV flared to life and he handed the remote back. 

“Why are _you_ magic for _my_ remote?” John asked with a laugh. 

Dave shrugged. “I’ve just got the right touch. Or maybe my leg is just the perfect slapping surface.” 

Amy then smacked his leg, looked at it contemplatively, and nodded. “It’s the leg.”

“You think?” John raised his hand and Dave snagged it to stop him. 

“ _Enough_ with the leg-slapping,” Dave’s flat monotone had an almost begging undertone to it and John snickered. “Let’s just watch the movie.”

“Alright, alright,” John relented, lowering his hand again. Dave let go of it (John would say he did so a bit late, as if he didn’t want to…but tonight John kept his mouth shut), and shifted a bit, relaxing into the couch while the movie title screen started up. 

They finished most of the pizza by the end of the first movie, which was truly a terrible, terrible movie, only bearable by the jokes they extrapolated from it. John leaned forward to shut the pizza box all the way, nabbing the package of Oreos, as Dave ran a hand over his face with a groan. “ _God damn_ , that movie was _so_ awful.” 

“You have to wonder why and how it was even made, let alone released.” Amy added. “It feels like _somebody_ should’ve realized it was crap, like, way earlier.” 

John flopped back onto the couch with a shrug. “Maybe they just didn’t care.” 

A pause, and then Dave asked, “Is there anything after the credits?” 

“I don’t know,” John shrugged. 

“Do we _care_ if there’s anything after the credits?” Amy sounded almost a little tired, and John laughed. 

“Yeah, nah.”

Dave chimed in with a “nope” as John stood up to go put in the next movie, tossing the Oreo package down in his seat. Amy stretched with a yawn, then reached over for a handful of the now-almost-gone popcorn. Dave passed the bowl to her, not wanting any more, as John fumbled around with the disks before putting in the next movie and coming back to sit down. 

“This one will be better,” John said, snagging the Oreos again and ripping them open to stuff a couple in his mouth. He passed the package to Dave as the disk started up, then mashed the Menu button on the remote to skip the previews. 

Dave tried to pass the Oreos on to Amy, but she didn’t take them, so he resigned himself to being the keeper of the Oreos. “I hope so.” 

(It was, but not by much.)

* * *

Dave didn’t even notice John resting his head on his shoulder until he went to stretch at the end of their third movie and almost knocked John’s head _off_ his shoulder. John was snoring lightly, and for once he didn’t have that general aura of chaos that followed him around everywhere, so of course Dave felt obligated not to wake him. He settled back in as he had been before, warily eyeing the top of John’s head for any signs of having been woken up. He didn’t move at all, so Dave guessed he was in the clear. Amy was still snuggled into his other side, of course, and very much awake, reaching to pick up the remote to fast-forward through the credits and see if there was anything extra at the end. When it turned out there wasn’t, Dave quietly piped up, “If you want to watch another movie, you’re gonna have to be the one to get up.” She turned to look at him and he gestured to John. “I’m trapped.”

She giggled, leaning over to ruffle his hair. It dried even more curly than usual, in an unruly and fun-to-play-with kind of way. “Adorable.” 

“Yeah, you’d think so, given it’s not _your_ shoulder he’s drooling on.”

The movie returned to the DVD title screen, and Amy turned the volume down. “Should we wake him up?” 

“If you wanna go, or watch another movie, probably.” Dave wouldn’t be opposed to just crashing here too, but he knew she didn’t like sleeping without her orthopedic pillow. He wouldn’t ask her to go through that much discomfort just because he didn’t want to wake John up. 

“We can stay here a little bit.” She set the remote down and then cuddled up next to him again. “So long as you won’t be too tired to drive back.” 

“Nah, I’ll be fine.” He looped one arm around her again, and she hugged him. 

“You smell like pool water.” 

“Probably better than how I smelled before.” 

She snickered. “Yeah, same here.” Silence lapsed for a moment before she commented, “Today was a good day.” 

Dave mulled it over for a moment. “Yeah.” 

“I wish we could just do this all the time.”

“I don’t know if our psyches could take that much John Time,” he quipped.

Amy snorted. “You’re not fooling anyone here, David.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” He chuckled, albeit a little uneasily. In response, she just buried her face in his shoulder and hummed quietly, so he dropped it. Mostly because he didn’t really want to know, lest it ruin the moment somehow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...im stuck in florida atm and every time i step outside i Die of swamp ass send help.  
> also holy shit this thing sat in drafts for Literal Months i kept getting just a weird level of writers block


	12. Fear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dave has a nightmare.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place after WTHDIJR, vaguely references some Intense Shit that happened in that book, emotional hurt/comfort. John/Dave/Amy

Dave sat up with a jolt, sweating profusely and shivering. That image was fucking burned into his brain. He knew when he first saw it that it’d never leave him but of course, the subconscious has a way of twisting things, making them worse. Magnifying the most horrific aspects then shoving it in front of his face, trapping him with it, forcing him to see it and contend with what could’ve happened—with what could still happen, if he were to be particularly pessimistic. He couldn’t bear to lose half his universe, he wouldn’t be able to carry on like that.

John’s voice snapped him halfway out of his panicked fog. “Dave? You okay?” He had been lying on Dave, and flopped off, unintentionally dumped onto the bed by his partner bolting upright. He was resting on his elbows now, blinking blearily at Dave, who responded by reaching out a shaking hand to touch his face. For a moment he’d been afraid that he was hallucinating or in a second dream, but John’s face felt real-enough under his hand, and didn’t disappear. Slightly lumpy, stubble in patches on his jawline, scar on his forehead, same as always. John didn’t even question Dave weirdly feeling up his face, just tried again to get some kind of response out of him. “David?” 

“Just a nightmare.” Dave managed, withdrawing his hand before lying back down. His heart was still fucking racing and he couldn’t stop seeing the image of John facedown on that couch every time he blinked. _It wasn’t real. It wasn’t real. It **isn’t** real. It was **never** real. _ He lifted both hands to his face, took a deep breath, and tried to rub the image from his eyes. Amy stirred from his other side, not fully awake but awake enough to know something was wrong. 

John pulled himself up, arms under him for support, and leaned over Dave. “Wanna talk about it, ooor…?” 

“No,” Dave blurted, pulling his hands off his face. He thought he might almost cry for a moment but he kept himself together. He was still shivering a little. “It’s fine.”

John blinked down at him, staring directly into Dave’s eyes for a length of time that would ordinarily have made Dave very uncomfortable, but he was tired enough and fucked-up enough that looking up into that prolonged eye contact was a comforting affirmation that John was definitely not dead. After a long moment, John didn’t seem to find whatever he was looking for, so he simply asked, “Can I lie back down?” The ‘on top of you’ was left unsaid, clearly-implied based on history. In response Dave lifted his arms to invite a hug, and John laid down, nestled on the side of Dave opposite to Amy, burrowing one arm under him and tossing the other over his chest, fingers brushing Amy’s shoulder. Dave wrapped both arms around John, still trembling a little, but he was starting to calm down. Barely. Amy scooted closer, pressing her back into Dave’s side again, a silent gesture of support. 

There was a quiet moment. Dave’s heartbeat slowed to something resembling a normal pace and he stopped shaking so badly. John didn’t ask any more questions of him, just held him close. Amy dropped off to sleep again, the soft noise of her snoring the only sound in the room other than Dave when he was still panting slightly. John was eerily quiet, waiting for Dave to say something or fall asleep. He wasn’t going to sleep again until Dave did, that was for sure.

“You’re really not gonna … **_leave_** , right?” The question tumbled out before Dave could get any kind of self-control going but he didn’t regret it. He needed to know, even if he couldn’t actually force himself to ask it in any way that wasn’t this obtuse.

But John knew. John knew what he was thinking of and he was fairly sure he knew what Dave was remembering and, most importantly, he now knew what the nightmare was about. He tightened his grip on Dave, squeezing him close for a moment. “I told you, man. I’m not going to leave you like that.” He shifted, pressing his forehead to Dave’s jaw. “I’m here.”

“Good. Great. Don’t go anywhere.” He tilted his head to squish his cheek into John’s head. 

“I _will_ get up to piss eventually—”

“You know what I mean.”

“—but anything else, you _know_ I’m dragging you down with me.” He lifted his not-currently-under-Dave hand to gently caress Dave’s face. 

Dave shut his eyes, and repeated, “Good.”


	13. Shitwolves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this is just.. a fragment of something that plunked into my head. no, i don't know what's going on, either. if i ever figure it out, maybe ill make it its own fic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tags: blood/injury, the trio is In Peril yet again

Dave had never been a fan of running. To be fair to running, though, he only ever had to run when he was running for his life, so maybe it really wasn’t so bad once you took the pants-wetting-terror aspect out of it. But he wasn’t keen to give that a go, no matter how much John told him it really could be fun once you got into it. Dave didn’t trust any of John’s opinions on exercise, both because of John’s general naturally-athletic tendencies but also because he’d been insane enough to actually run track for a few years, and be good at it. Looking at John, you probably wouldn’t figure him for that much of a jock, beyond the fact he’s tall and blonde and comes off a little dense, but if you took into account the fact he was an adrenaline junkie, suddenly it’d make sense. 

Dave resolved to smack the cheery look right off John’s face the next time he tried to say running would be fun. 

Actually, if he could catch up to John, he’d be likely to just go ahead and smack him in the moment, just for good measure. He kept his eyes fixed to John’s bright mane of hair bouncing along as he sprinted a few feet ahead of Dave, arms flailing as he did his best to clear a path, the two of them doing their damnedest to outrun the shitwolves behind them. Dave afforded a quick glance back just to affirm the Scooby-Doo-monster-esque creatures were still following them, though he really didn’t need to, as the second he glanced back one let out a yowl and what sounded like twenty others echoed the noise back. He turned back around and tried to speed up, feet slapping against the ground painfully, and decided maybe getting out alive was more important than walloping John for provoking the wolves in the first place. Even if he definitely was going to have some new scars from all their claws.

His lungs felt like they were collapsing. Blood dripped from his nose and into his open, wheezing mouth, and he barely even cared that he was definitely also drooling it back out onto his chin. They could both do with a shower. His legs were absolutely burning and he felt like if he slowed down at all, he’d just fall over and then it’d all be over for him. He’d almost entertain the idea if it didn’t involve a lot of pain, claws, letting the wolves win, and leaving John stranded to finish things by himself. 

They erupted from the woods onto the small clearing right by the road. The truck was idling there, with Amy in its backseat, looking at her phone. She jumped in fright when John ripped the driver’s side door open and sprang into the car, Dave right behind him and shoving him into the passenger seat a bit hastily. He turned the keys to the ignition and immediately threw it into gear, taking off before even shutting the door, engine roaring unhealthily as the truck jolted down the dark road. 

“What happened?! Are you okay?!” Amy asked, gripping her phone tightly.

“We got the key,” Dave choked out between gasps. It was trapped in his hand even as he clutched the steering wheel, yanking the door closed finally. The little ‘please put on your seatbelt’ electronic bell was already chiming, but all three ignored it. “All that matters.” 

_Ding…_

“What was chasing you?” Amy had turned around in her seat and was peering into the darkness, but she couldn’t see.

_Ding…_

John turned to look, leaning over the cupholder console, and immediately wished he hadn’t. Just outside the rear window, not quite in arm’s reach of the car, eyes lit up and glowing bright red from the rear lights, were the shitwolves—a whole pack of them, all unidentifiable in the way where they were all the same, like a particularly lazy animator just copied and pasted the one shitwolf over and over again.

_Ding…_

That was how they all looked: bipedal, big glowing eyes, unnervingly hairy, with humanoid hands of four fingers all ending in deep black claws. Talons, John would dare to say. Disturbingly _long,_ and dizzyingly sharp. “Oh shit oh fuck _Dave_ fucking _floor it,”_ he blurted, reflexively pulling away from his seat.

_Ding…_

“I’m trying!” Dave answered, and he really was, foot to the floor and really grateful that this was one big straightaway, so he didn’t have to account for curves. “Put on your fuckin’ seatbelt, that dinging is driving me crazy.” John did so, and Dave took one hand off the wheel long enough to haphazardly shove his seatbelt clasp at the buckle, cursing when he couldn’t get it. John leaned over and nabbed it from him, clicking it into place. “Thanks.” Dave tossed the key to John, who only fumbled with it a little bit before yanking it off his shirt and turning it over in his hands. 

“It’s all sweaty,” he observed in a mumble. 

“Yeah, sorry, _running for my life_ makes me _a bit sweaty.”_ Dave glanced in the rearview mirror. The shitwolves were losing ground, not able to run at—he glanced to the speedometer— _ninety fucking miles per hour._ He glued his eyes back to the road. If he hit anything at this speed they were fucked. He would _not_ be the one to put Amy through that again.


	14. Lugubrious

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: suicidal ideation  
> this one deals w dave's depression ig  
> dave/amy with just a Touch of john/dave/amy Kind Of, If You Squint. yknow, like in canon.

The first thought Dave had when he woke up was, _fuck, I don’t want to be awake. I don’t want to do Today._ He kept his eyes shut, wondering if he could just trick himself into falling back asleep, and maybe just sleep the entire day. But he knew that wouldn’t happen. He’d already slept a good eighteen hours, after not sleeping whatsoever for two days, and his rhythms were all outta whack and there was no way he’d go back to sleep. His brain was wired, up and about and making him feel terrible. He felt like he was lying in a deep, inky pit of tar, brain dragged down and clogged with a thick suffocating darkness.

Amy wasn’t beside him, so she must already be at work. The bed wasn’t still-warm where she had been. It could even be late enough that John was already at work, so really, he _could_ lie there all day long. Except he had to get up for his therapy appointment. That was in the late afternoon, though. He could easily snooze until then; his phone alarm would wake him up for it. Only problem with that plan was that his brain was demanding he be awake and think about what a piece of shit he was. 

And he really was. By his perception, anyways. He was bad enough that Amy wanted to leave. Bad enough that it took John talking to her—what he wouldn’t give to know _that_ conversation—to make her stay. Sometimes he felt like it’d be better for her if she _did_ leave. It’d hurt, sure, but she deserved better than him, certainly. And after all, with her gone he’d have one less reason to stick around. He was just another locust, a drain on everyone’s resources, only necessary right when the world was going to shit—but surely anyone else could do that. If the Soy Sauce chose _him_ , it could choose _any_ stupid motherfucker. Though he wouldn’t want to leave John to handle it by himself. Without Dave’s occasionally-rational thought, John would maybe probably be fucking _dead_ by now. Though he’d probably be decently-okay if Dave were gone now, given he had some experience by this point.

The bedroom door creaked open and he instinctively snapped his eyes open, not exactly ready for a fight but not opposed to one, either. But it was just John, holding two mugs. “Morning, Dave!” He was unreasonably cheery for what felt like so early in the morning to Dave, and Dave didn’t answer with more than a tired grunt. “Got you coffee.” 

Dave, with great effort, hauled himself into an upright position and John sat down next to him, passing him a mug. “What time is it?” Dave croaked after a sip that burnt his tongue.

John hummed for a moment. “About one-thirty.” 

Dave side-eyed him. “Shouldn’t you be at work?”

With a shake of his head, he answered, “Today’s a day off. We were supposed to get this shipment of lumber in, but the truck tipped over, so we won’t get it ‘til tomorrow. Ssssssooooooo, we can’t do _anything_ today.” He shrugged.

John had been working a construction-slash-restoration job for about a month now, fixing up a variety of buildings that had gotten water-damaged by the rain and/or the flooding. It was good work for him, and good to have a routine and something helpful to do. Plus, it paid pretty nicely, all things considered. His house had gotten a little bit fucked-over from all the flooding, too; he was staying with the two of them, in their new apartment, while the first floor got all patched-up properly. The mold made it a little unlivable, in Amy’s opinion, so she (and Dave, though they did pretend it was just her) insisted he stay with them until renovations were done. It was more comfortable of an arrangement than Dave had first figured it’d be. 

“Ah, okay.” Dave took another sip of coffee. It must have been either some that Amy made, or John finally managed to not fuck up a pot of coffee, because it tasted about right. Somehow, whatever he did to it always made it taste like motor oil. And it was crazy caffeinated, too. The kind of high-level caffeine that’d have Dave’s hands shaking. He wasn’t sure how John could stand it, but he wasn’t sure how John could stand a lot of things that didn’t shake him whatsoever. That was irrelevant; the question about the coffee was more important. Amy would sometimes make coffee in the morning, before she left, usually for John because he was the only one to get up at the same early hours but sometimes if Dave hadn’t slept she’d make some for him, too. But she usually left for work at 8:30, and coffee didn’t really keep that long—or, well, technically it did, but it tasted way worse than this, so he didn’t drink it. That was the routine; Amy woke up, made coffee for John and, on rare occasions if she was very tired, herself, and Dave would make himself some whenever he woke up, which was usually around noon. Sometimes past noon. 

To say Dave and Amy had a domesticity to their dynamic was a fair statement. They cohabitated relatively-well (though Amy preferred things to be a little cleaner than Dave kept them) and it wasn’t really too difficult for them to manage not pissing each other off too much. Really it was more about Amy gently reminding Dave to pick his shit up. He was pretty sure there was nothing she could do that would piss him off. They had wondered, when first considering this new arrangement, if adding John and all his chaos to the mix would throw that out of whack, but surprisingly, it did the opposite. Falling into a domestic routine with him was pretty easy; he was nothing if not a polite guest. You wouldn’t figure it from looking at or talking to him, but John was at least closer to being a neat-freak than Amy was. Not like he had to dust every day or anything, but he kept his clothes in the closet and he kept countertops mostly-clean, and while he _was_ guilty of just dumping things on the floor he usually would deal with them eventually. Unlike Dave, who would just let things pile up until he absolutely _had_ to handle the problem. Beyond that, John wasn’t any more of a mess than Dave usually was, and he actually washed dishes once he was done with them. They’d quit using paper plates since he’d moved in, solely because he’d always wash the dishes. 

It got to a point where Dave almost didn’t want him to leave, though he felt he wouldn’t ever say so. 

“This is good,” he remarked passively, hoping John’s answer would shed some light on where it came from. 

“I put, like, sugar and stuff in yours. Also Amy showed me how to actually work the machine.” John sipped his own mug. 

Dave nodded. That checked out. They sat in a comfortable silence for a few moments, until John set down his mug on the nightstand and leaned back, stretching his arms out above his head. “You gonna lay around ‘til your appointment?” There wasn’t any judgement in his tone, just idle curiosity. 

“Probably.” Dave didn’t look at him. 

“Sounds ideal.” John sighed, arms flopping down into his lap. He then moved to lay down.

The question sort of fell out of Dave’s mouth before he could stop himself. “What’re you doing?” He hadn’t meant to sound accusatory, he was just a bit puzzled.

“Amy said it’d be fine by her if I took a nap on her side, but I get it if you don’t want that,” John sat back up with a little grunt. 

“Wait, what? She did? Why?” Dave blinked, confused. He wasn’t entirely sure why she’d say that, beyond the fact that she’s a bit of an unpredictable sort of kind-hearted. 

John rubbed the back of his neck. “I… kinda had to admit, the couch has been fucking up my back.” 

There was a prickle of guilt creeping up the base of Dave’s skull. To think, he’d contemplated asking John to stay, just because he liked having him around. The man deserved to sleep in a bed. Especially given his job was pretty physically-demanding. “Oh.” John moved to stand up and Dave blurted, “Wait, where are you going?” 

“I thought you didn’t—”

“Lie your ass back down and take a nap. I don’t care.” 

John complied. Not like he would’ve been stubborn about it, after all. He stretched out, sighed, and shut his eyes. Dave kept drinking his coffee. When he was done with it, he leaned over John (carefully) to set it on the nightstand before laying down next to him. He could tell John wasn’t asleep, he was just lying there, hands folded over his chest, eyes closed and a neutral look on his face. His hair was splayed about his head in a messy, curly cloud, exposing the little scar over his eyebrow from that time Dave shot him. In Dave’s defense, he’d been sorta possessed at the time, though if it weren’t for the fact that it contributed to John’s whole punchably-handsome aesthetic, like the scar across the bridge of his nose or the one tracing a little up his cheek from his jawline, Dave would feel more guilty over it. But every imperfection on the stupid bastard’s face worked to his advantage, a fact Dave couldn’t deny being very, very envious of. 

Dave then looked away lest John open his eyes and glance over; the staring would be too weird to explain. He fixed his eyes to the wall, and tried not to let his mind wander again, but of course, he never got his way. He found himself wondering if John and Amy could carry on just like before if he wasn’t around. They’d have to get all of his shit out of this place, sure, but after that? It’s not like Dave would have any family members who’d come along seeking closure or any keepsakes. He was pretty sure his death would be met with shrugged shoulders and “good riddance” on their part. He’d been enough trouble over the course of his life; him dying meant erasing the possibility of him being a problem again in the future. He wondered if it’d be a relief for Amy, too, on some level. She’d put up with his bullshit for long enough, after all. She’d probably cry over him for a little while, because she had a heart, but surely it’d be on to greener pastures from there, right? She wouldn’t have him draining her finances, meaning she’d be able to afford her medication refills on time. She wouldn’t have to be indebted to John. Speaking of John—he’d probably be better-off, too. He was clean now, after all, at least for the most part, so he didn’t need Dave to cart him off the hospital anymore, or kick his ass for having to have someone else do the same. He could probably carry on just fine after grieving. If he _would_ grieve. Dave couldn’t help but find it nigh-on-impossible to imagine either of them grieving over him for too long. _He_ wouldn’t grieve if he heard he died. Technically, he already had died, and he didn’t exactly grieve over that, either. 

Something gently poked his arm. A familiar hand, but he still flinched slightly. “You okay?” 

He wanted to say he was, but John’s damned practically-psychic intuition would catch him out in the lie. Instead, he grunted. It was enough of a nonanswer to not incriminate him and enough of an actual answer to maybe placate John. 

He heard a slight movement, and felt that John had turned his head to look at him. “Hey.” Dave glanced over and had to do his best not to flinch again when he made eye contact. John was staring right at him with some very intense eyes. “I care about you.”

It was so simple and so blunt and so very _John_ to just outright say it. He was nothing if not honest when it came to his feelings, regardless of if it was the smart thing to do. “…Thanks.” Dave, on the other hand, couldn’t possibly say anything even remotely sappy while looking right at John, so he turned his head back to the ceiling in order to tell him, “I care about you too.” He tried to sound even more monotone than usual, like that would be less incriminating, wishing he’d just been able to think up some joke on the fly, but John’s hand was on his arm. _That_ was weird, and taking up a lot of mental real estate at the moment. Suddenly he didn’t really want to keep lying there, not because it was uncomfortable to be lying so close to John (they’d shared beds before at sleepovers, it really wasn’t very out-of-the-ordinary for them) but because it was _too_ comfortable. He didn’t like feeling caught between a rock and a hard place—wanting to die, but being too cognizant of the damage his loss might cause—and being close to people was always frightening. Try as he might, he’d never be able to push John away, and he knew that at this point, but he could feel himself drifting into a state where he’d try his absolute damnedest to. And that wasn’t going to end well.

Dave went back to staring at the ceiling and pretended John was going to sleep. He could feel he was still being watched, but eventually he heard John’s head turn back again, and assumed he was in the clear. He shut his eyes and tried to keep his head empty. It was pretty selfish of him to consider dying right now, after all. After John made him coffee and oh yeah, worked with his girlfriend to convince him to go to therapy and look into antidepressants. It was a little too new for him to have a prescription yet (mostly because he kept dragging his feet on it…) but it’s also not like everything would just automatically get better the moment he started therapy. He wasn’t stupid enough to believe that and neither was John. 

Maybe that was why it took so little convincing for John to stay over until his house was renovated. 

He wondered briefly if Amy had talked to him beforehand, like when she’d been planning to leave. How much of _everything_ was just them quietly going behind his back to be nice to him? He appreciated it but felt so, so guilty about it, too. He just took and took and took and couldn’t ever give anything back. 

He was jarred out of his thoughts again when John’s hand slid past his elbow. It didn’t go further than that, calloused fingers gently wrapping around his arm above the wrist. Dave glanced over. John’s eyes were closed, and he looked halfway asleep, despite the caffeine. Dave found himself wondering if John was trying to subtly hold his hand.

This was getting a little too close for his liking. Or at least, that’s what he tried to tell himself. He wasn’t really sure of John’s motives, but he felt like it was meant to be a comforting gesture. An “I’m here if you need me” sort of thing. It was kinda nice, he had to admit. Of course, he already knew John was there for him, but still. Despite all that, it felt like it’d all be too much if he held John’s hand. Or examined why even thinking about doing so made his heart rate increase.

He sat up and John cracked an eye open. “I should shower before I go.”

John let go of him. “Want me to drive you?” 

Dave shook his head. “Nah. Save gas.” 

“Mmkay.” John’s eye slid shut again. “Have fun.” 

He left John alone in his and Amy’s bed and did his best not to think about the fact that John was even there.

* * *

Therapy went fine. Passable. He was never thrilled about it and he never left it feeling like everything would magically be better from here on out. He guessed it was going to be one of those gradual changes he’d only notice when looking back on this, on the beginning of it all. So long as they could continue to afford this shit, that is.

When he arrived home, it was pretty much exactly the same as he’d left it. Amy would be on her way home, he supposed—it was around seven, and she usually worked until seven-thirty or eight. If she were to be out until nine, she’d have texted him by now. He took off his shoes at the front door, kicking them to the side to rest haphazardly beside John’s, and then he wandered through the living room, then the kitchen, looking for John. He found John still in the bedroom, lying on the bed in roughly the same position he’d been in before, snoring soundly now. He didn’t stay there, just peered in, saw his best friend open-mouthed drooling on his own arm, then ducked back out of the bedroom, satisfied. He just wanted to know where John was, that was all. 

Dave sank into an old well-worn cheap-ass recliner he and John had gotten off Craigslist shortly after he and Amy signed the lease on this place. It smelled like an old man and groaned like one too, but was quickly becoming Dave’s favoured place to sit and watch TV. He clicked on the TV, quickly lowering the volume before flicking through channels in search for something to watch. He wasn’t looking to get invested in anything, since Amy would be home soon, and then he could talk to her, but he _was_ looking for something that wouldn’t make him want to throw the remote at the television. Background noise. He needed static to fill his brain but he wanted to find a show he could actually stand not watching.

After a long while, John padded out of the bedroom with a loud yawn, stretching, then sighed equally-loudly and flopped down onto the couch, kicking his feet up on the coffee table. “Anything good on?”

“You need to ask?” Dave flipped to yet another channel in his desperate search. 

John scratched his stomach for a moment. “You tried the Food Network? I love watching people who can actually cook scrambling to do it under a timer.” 

Dave squinted at the remote. “Which one is that?” 

“Uuuuhhhhh 554 I think. Maybe. Don’t quote me on it.” 

That was good enough for Dave, who punched in the numbers like every button-press required immense force, which, given the state the remote was in, was about right. The channel flipped over to Gordon Ramsay yelling at someone. “Eh. Close enough?” 

“I’ll take it.” John shrugged. “If anybody starts throwing shit, though, I’m out.” 

Dave silently agreed. It wasn’t common for this show, but anything could happen on reality TV, after all. 

* * *

The front door opened. “I’m home,” Amy yelled into the house, shutting it behind her. 

“Hiiiiii!” John yelled back. 

“Welcome back,” Dave intoned.

She entered the living room. “Oh, you’re _both_ here.” She leaned over Dave’s recliner to kiss his forehead as she passed. He hummed happily at it. She then settled in on the couch beside John with a little sigh. “How was your day off?” 

“Great! I took a nap.” John grinned. 

“Good,” Amy smiled, glancing between the two of them. “You guys want dinner?” 

Dave nodded, and John said, “Sure. Do we have any plans? Or anything?” 

“We don’t have anything _here_ , unless someone wants to make a run to the store,” Amy mused tiredly. “I wouldn’t be opposed to just some McDonald’s or something though.” 

Even though he was pretty sure he’d regret greasy fast food the moment he was done eating it, Dave couldn’t deny the appeal to it. “I’d be fine with that.” 

“I’ll go get it,” John sprang up. “I’ve been wanting to get out of the house all day.” He then turned to look at the both of them. “The usuals?” Amy and Dave both nodded. “Cool, cool, I’ll be back in a bit.”

With that, he was out the front door, leaving the other two behind. There was a short pause before Dave spoke up again.

“How was work?” He asked absently. 

“Same as always,” Amy sighed, lying down on the couch. “How was therapy?”

“Same as always.”

That was their code for, _it really sucked, but no more than it usually sucks, so don’t alert the media or anything._

With that, they’d run out of things to talk about, and just quietly watched TV for a while, occasionally commenting on what was going on. When John came back with McDonald’s about twenty minutes later, they settled in at the rickety dining room table that was held level by a stack of free magazines they pilfered from a stand that was trying to entice people into a subscription by just giving the first issue for free. Amy had read it out of some sort of moral obligation, and agreed that by stealing about thirty (they were thin magazines) they were doing the populace of Undisclosed a favour. John, for his part, took some of the leftover copies and reported back that they didn’t even make good rolling paper. 

The first ten-or-so minutes were quiet. Dave didn’t notice Amy and John exchange several glances, but if he had, he wouldn’t’ve been so blindsided by Amy saying, “So, is this gonna be a more permanent kind of arrangement?” 

Dave stopped mid-chew, confused for a moment before he caught on to her train of thought. He glanced at John, who for his part was uncharacteristically blank-faced, looking down into his fries like he was trying to count them. Waiting for Dave to say if he’d kick John out. “... I don’t know?” Dave hazarded. He wouldn’t kick John out before his house was livable again, because _of course_ he wouldn’t, but he also wouldn’t want to force him to stay if he didn’t want to. John staying or going was mostly up to John.

“’Cause if it is, John needs a bed of some kind. The couch just isn’t nice to sleep on.” Amy continued.

Dave mulled it over for a moment, glancing to John yet again. John took this as his cue to finally speak up. “It’s really okay, Amy—” 

But she gently interrupted, which Dave took to know meant this was very serious to her, as she didn’t like to interrupt anyone, ever. “It’s not. You need to be doing okay enough to not get hurt at your job.” 

John really couldn’t argue with that but Dave could see he didn’t want them to buy him a mattress or something outright, because moving the one he already had was not at all feasible. He had that please-don’t-spend-money-on-me look in his eyes that Dave is more used to feeling than seeing on anyone else. Still, Amy had a good point. He needed somewhere to sleep and, while the apartment did technically have a bed already, it was mostly pretty occupied. The couch clearly wasn’t cutting it but they needed some sort of an economical option, so Dave tried, “What about an air mattress?” 

“An air mattress?” John echoed.

“Yeah. I mean, an air mattress is pretty versatile. We could get a lot of use out of it. Not a bad idea.” Still, it would be an unaccounted-for expense, and they all knew that. He was grasping at straws and well aware of it.

Amy gave them both a contemplative look. “Or he could just join us.”

Dave turned to her with a surprised stare, and she shrugged. “What? It’s just like a sleepover. The bed’s big enough and you sleep smack-dab in the middle, anyways. He can take the other side.” 

John snickered. “That’s a good point. You do always gravitate toward the center.” He balled up a napkin and shot it into the takeout bag like a basketball. “I’m okay with that if you are. The couch is just fine if not, though.” 

Dave barely had to consider. “Sure. Why not.” If Amy was fine with it, it meant she’d already considered if it would fuck with her back and decided it wouldn’t. Beyond that, Dave didn’t care. Less than ideal, maybe, but nothing he could really object to, and it’d probably be better for John’s spine anyways. 

* * *

John flopped down next to Dave with a yawn. Amy sat on his other side, reading a book by the light of the lamp on the nightstand, but she pulled the bookmark from the back of it and saved her spot, shutting it and setting it down behind her alarm clock. This was their routine, usually; John and Dave would watch television until one or both of them wanted to sleep, while she read in their room (unless it was a movie night), and then she and Dave would go to sleep. This time, however, when the two had gotten bored of shitty TV, they both headed back to the bedroom. Dave did his best to pretend it wasn’t weird at all. And it really wasn’t, but it _was_ at the same time. He couldn’t tell if it was more weird that he was sharing the bed with Amy _and_ John, or if it was weirder to be sharing the bed he usually considered his and Amy’s _with_ John, but he forced himself not to dwell on it, instead settling in like everything was normal.

Amy clicked off the light. “Good night, babe. Good night, John.”

The other two echoed the “good night” back to her as she settled in, snuggling up next to Dave. He didn’t react other than to loop one arm around her. Then, everything was quiet.

This was often the worst part, in Dave’s opinion. Waiting to fall asleep. Like waking up and having nothing to do, this was the time where his mind could really wander absolutely-freely. Amy was quiet beside him, probably already halfway asleep. He wasn’t keen to glance over at John because he didn’t want to be weird about this whole situation, so he just ignored the presence of his best friend. He stared at the ceiling for a long, long time, and it was so silent he almost forgot John was there until he almost jumped out of his skin when John shifted a little to be more comfortable. He sighed silently, a little annoyed with himself. Neither of the other two were making this weird. It was just him. He kept staring at the ceiling, determined not to think about anything. It didn’t work, of course. His brain picked up this afternoon’s train of thought like no time had passed. 

He knew if he died, John would take care of Amy. He’d already asked as much of him before, and he knew, since John was the only one who actually followed up on Big Jim’s request, that John would do it. It’d be even easier now that he was living with them. He started to wonder just how he could do it—

John’s arm slung across his chest, and he stiffened. It wasn’t abnormal; John tended to flop around a bit when he was sleeping, but Dave hadn’t noticed he was already asleep. 

He soon realized John wasn’t, in fact, asleep yet, as he heard a very tired murmur. “Are you okay?” 

It was the second time in twenty-four hours that Dave didn’t want to lie to him, only now, he was more tired and less inclined to try to deflect. “No.” 

“You wanna talk about it?” 

“No.” 

“Alright.” John started to retract his arm but, in a display of some sort of weird lapse of impulse control or potentially his sanity, Dave quickly reached up to nab his hand. He didn’t fully understand why; typically he’d have the opposite sort of reaction, he hated being touched by basically anyone who wasn’t Amy, but he felt in his core that he didn’t want John to pull away. He immediately got unnerved by that impulse, though, and let go of John’s hand, pulling his arm back with an apology on the tip of his tongue, but instead of being disturbed, John, apparently, understood. Maybe. All Dave knew was John cautiously extended his arm back over Dave’s chest and rested it there. 

Dave didn’t say _anything_ at all about it, and neither did John.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a bit scatterbrained and not very good, but it's Something


	15. Prank War

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amy and John have an ongoing prank war; Amy wins this round.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> john/dave/amy; they're all sharing a house

It was late at night, or very early in the morning, depending on your viewpoint, when Amy set off the biggest Comedy Bomb of her and John’s eternal prank war. She was downstairs, watching a late-night movie she wanted to see that the other two had no interest in. Normally, they would entertain her wish, of course, as good boyfriends do, but her only interest in this movie was because it was absolutely terrible, and neither of them felt in the mood for a horrible movie, so they retreated to the bedroom instead. They were lying there, side by side, both on their phones because they couldn’t sleep (Dave could never sleep early; John wanted to wait up for Amy).

An important pretext to the ensuing chaos would be that John gave Amy his Discord password weeks ago, as a favour for reasons he can’t even remember but most certainly were at least somewhat valid, and that John had a bad habit of leaving his phone brightness on the maximum setting all the time. If the screen was too bright he’d just hold it farther from his face. This was just another in the series of bizarre quirks that made up the entirety of John. 

Downstairs, Amy was weathering a commercial break when she remembered she still had John’s Discord logged in on her phone from the aforementioned favour she asked of him. She remembered this because she glanced down and realized she was getting notifications from his account, and immediately, a wonderfully evil thought entered her mind. 

John was in the middle of scrolling through his photos in search of just the right meme to send in #general when it happened. In an instant, his entire screen lit up in a blinding flash. A one-shot kill. He yelped, Dave glanced over, and the phone tumbled from John’s hand, whacking him in the face and amplifying the flashbang effect of the sudden brightness. 

“I’ve been betrayed!” John yelled. “I’ve been sniped!” He fumbled, pushing the phone off his face, and Dave started to laugh. John tossed a hand out blindly to Dave like a dying soldier in a war drama, grasping desperately. “Carry on without me, Dave!” 

For Amy’s part, from her position downstairs, all she could hear was John’s yelling muffled by a floor and a room or two between them, and then the sound of Dave dying from laughter, and she started cackling as well. It was so instantaneous, an explosion of chaos the moment she hit Save Changes after toggling the interface to Light Mode. She heard more yelling, more laughter, and the bedroom door opened with its signature loud-as-hell creak. Then, thundering stumbling footsteps across the upstairs, followed swiftly by commotion on the staircase. By this point she’d slid off the couch in a fit of hyena laughter, sitting in front of it with her phone clutched in her one hand, laughing so hard she was almost crying. The door to the stairs banged open and John skidded into the room, Dave at his heels.

John wasn’t even steadied yet when he pointed one accusatory finger at Amy and bellowed, “YOU.” 

Amy looked up through watery eyes, still wheezing, and saw him doing his best to maintain his composure, shoulders shaking with restrained giggles. Behind him, Dave was bent double, positively howling with laughter.

“Me?” She managed innocently, and John dissolved too, hands on his knees and shaking his head, grinning ear-to-ear. Amy stood up and, still laughing, walked around the couch to join them. “I think I won that round.” She declared smugly, tousling his hair.

“Goddamnit,” John huffed, but he was still smiling. “You may have won the battle, Sullivan, but you won’t win the war!” 

She grinned. “We’ll just have to see about that.”


	16. Picnic Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The trio relax one sunny spring Sunday.  
> john/dave/amy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one was just fun n relaxing 2 write i hope yall like it lmao

Warmth radiated down from a bright blue sky dappled with thick white clouds, tempered by a light wind sweeping through long grass. It was near the full-swing part of spring, just before the middle, when it was warm enough to be outside but not warm enough for the flowers to be blooming in excess. In just two weeks, every plant in Undisclosed would be barfing out pollen, and Dave would be suffering for it, but for now, he could step outside without sneezing his face off, and all three of them aimed to take advantage of it.

It was a Sunday, and John had had a brilliant idea that, for once, didn’t involve putting himself in harm’s way and/or copious amounts of alcohol. That was why all three of them found themselves sitting in a field on the outskirts of Undisclosed, near the water tower, on three towels John tied together and called a picnic blanket. He’d really committed to the whole thing, too, including bringing sandwiches and fruit in a picnic basket, which was just a beer cooler he wrote “piknik basket” on because in the heat of the moment he forgot how to spell “picnic.” (John and Dave had quibbled about what was the ‘real’ spelling until Amy had the bright idea to Google it.) Dave and Amy brought along beer and chips they’d picked up on the way to John’s house. 

“ _Damn_ , it’s lovely out here,” John tossed his hair over his shoulder, looking up with a grin. 

“It is,” Amy agreed, shifting a bit on her pillow. She didn’t like sitting on the ground, of course, so she’d brought one from their apartment; she was leaning back on Dave, head resting on his shoulders. She took a bite from her sandwich and closed her eyes, enjoying the warm sunlight for a moment. 

Dave grunted in the affirmative, squinting despite the cheap sunglasses on his face. He never liked wearing them, and not just because they were uncomfortable—in some part of his mind, sunglasses were for cool people, and he was definitely not cool enough for them. Plus, he looked stupid. Which in his mind kind of tied into the uncool point, but according to Amy, was just that the frames weren’t shaped right for his face-shape.

He pushed the sunglasses back up on his nose, glancing up at the sky. It was quite nice, what little of it he could see because sunlight always burned his eyes. He needed to get out more. This was actually the first time in about two weeks that he went and sat outside; he pretty much only saw the sun going to and from work and taking out the garbage. 

John cracked open a beer. “Aw man, I should’ve brought my guitar.” 

Dave side-eyed him, for once grateful that John sometimes didn’t think of things. “Too bad.” 

“I could go back and get it—”

“Nahhh, it’ll be alright,” Dave responded. At the same time, Amy answered, “At least finish your sandwich first.”

“Okay, okay,” John waved a hand, grinning. “Three Arm Sally doesn’t exactly have any acoustic songs, anyways.” A gust of wind caught his hair, blowing it from behind him back into his face, and he spluttered, pawing it away from his face. “Aw, goddamnit.” He pulled a hair tie off his wrist and started trying to gather everything to put it in a ponytail, but the wind kept yanking it out of his hands. 

Thoroughly amused, Dave and Amy watched him flounder for a moment until the wind stopped and he could finally put it up properly. “The tail of it’s still gonna hit you in the face,” Amy pointed out. 

“Maybe, but I’ll be damned if I ever wear a man-bun.” 

Dave snorted. “At least it’s, I don’t know, less hair smacking him than before?” 

John pointed. “See, he gets it.” 

“I’ve watched you wrangle it for longer.” He shrugged. 

“Eat your sandwich.” Amy nudged him. His turkey-and-rye was just sitting in his hands, like he’d forgotten he was holding it, so he took a bite to appease her. He didn’t really feel hungry, though. 

John had already eaten his sandwich on the way there, or at least most of it. He had shoved the last of it in his mouth as he stepped out of his car, in order to pick up the cooler, which wasn’t heavy but was awkwardly-sized and took two hands to heft. The handle on it got melted a while ago after one very weird monster-fighting debacle. Unlike most fire-related fuckups, though, that one was actually Dave’s fault, but John didn’t hold it against him for longer than ten minutes. In any case, he’d finished his sandwich and was just relaxing with them. 

When Amy finished her sandwich, she wadded the plastic bag into a little ball and slipped it into the cooler, then sat back again, hands—well, technically just hand—in her lap. She looked up at the sky again, feeling the wind ruffling through her hair, and just appreciating it for a while. Calm moments were rare for them; it was always either stressing out over paying the bills or stressing out over the world ending. She planned to take full advantage of this moment for however long it lasted, quietly listening to John and Dave banter lightly. 

“You’re telling me you’ve never been tempted to just stick your face under a fountain drink machine?” 

“I wouldn’t want Coke all over my face.” Dave paused to pull something out of his sandwich and toss it onto the grass before taking another bite. 

“That makes one of us.”

Dave nabbed a handful of grass and tossed it at John, who brushed it off his lap with a laugh. “Is that why you won’t go back to KFC? Did they kick you out for that shit?”

“Mmmmmaybe. Maybe not.” John’s grin said ‘yes’ even as he did his best to be cagey about it. 

“Shitbird. That place is really good! It’s, I don’t know, the cleanest fast-food place here.” 

“We’ll just have to pick somewhere else for our lunch dates until I cut my hair and they forget who I am again.” 

Amy glanced over at that, surprised. “You’re thinking of cutting your hair?” 

John nodded. “Not by much. Maybe an inch or two. The ends are getting all frizzy.” Amy found that a little bit hard to believe, but for the opposite reason than one might suspect—John wasn’t the kind of person who did things moderately. Of the three of them, John was the most likely to shave his head on a whim. He was also the most likely to be confident about it for maybe two days before regretting it. This was based on two separate occurrences where John shaved all his hair off (once because he thought it’d look badass, once because he really, really screwed up, somehow, in a way neither he nor Dave were keen to relive apparently because they wouldn’t tell Amy) and ended up regretting it so much he grew it out even longer than before. At present, it rested just past his shoulders. 

“You gonna go somewhere, or cut it with safety scissors again?” Dave asked absently. 

John hummed contemplatively, wrinkling his nose as he glanced up at the sun. “Probably just gonna do it myself at three in the morning again. Wanna help?” 

“If you wake me up to cut your hair, I’ll kick your ass.” Dave finished his sandwich and wadded up the packaging to toss at John. It bopped him in the forehead and he caught it as it tumbled down, laughing. 

“Have to get out of bed to kick my ass,” John pointed out. “Might as well just go ahead and cut my hair while you’re at it.” 

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t also cut your hair, while I’m kicking your ass.” Dave countered.

“Multitasking!” Amy chimed in. 

“That’s right.” Dave sounded almost smug.

John lobbed the little ball back at Dave, and he caught it clumsily. That of course quickly evolved into them throwing it back and forth at increasing speed until they were both laughing too hard to even throw it, and it tumbled to the towels beneath them. Amy snagged it and put it in the cooler, if only to prevent them from throwing it back and forth again and losing it in the grass. 

Speaking of the grass, she glanced beyond the cooler and paused for a second to admire the wildflowers. They were just starting to crop up, and soon the field would be positively full of them, but as of right now, there were only a few beginning to bloom. She gently plucked one, turning it over in her hand, then got an idea, eyes flicking first to John then to Dave. John caught her eye; she tilted her head toward Dave, arching one eyebrow in a silent question as she twirled the little flower. John glanced around for a moment, trying to think, and she watched the lightbulb go on over it his head when he caught on to her implication. Amy turned her focus to Dave, and leaned over, flower in hand. “Hey, hold still.” Dave turned blinked down at her, holding still, and his eyes flicked to one side as she gently tucked it behind his ear, then combed some of his hair over it with her fingers. He’d frozen when her hand brushed against his head, all of his focus on that feeling, cheeks flushing ever-so-slightly red. That was why he didn’t notice John, who’d leaned behind him, carefully tucking more flowers in his hair toward the back of his head, sticking the stalks between tangled bits. “There we go,” Amy pulled away again, smiling at him. “You’re very pretty now.” Her eyes drifted to the array of wildflowers and weeds now tangled in his hair. John grinned and gave her a thumbs-up from behind Dave before leaning back again, and she tried not to snicker.

“Thanks, babe.” Dave smirked. It wasn’t much but it did make him feel, for a fleeting moment, quite pretty. 

He glanced over when he saw John lean over and pick up a wildflower himself, one of the long purple ones. “This thing looks like one-half of a mustache.” John turned it over in his hands, and then Dave watched the idea enter John’s head moments before John snagged another one of them and tilted his head back, sticking the stems on his upper lip. Amy started giggling as John began making a variety of faces, trying to keep the flowers on his face; eventually, he puckered his lips right under his nose, trapping the stems there, and tipped his head back down. “Do I look dapper?”

Dave burst into laughter. “Dude, you look fucking stupid.”

Amy swatted his arm lightly. “Don’t be mean! Purple is _definitely_ your colour, John.”

“I’m gonna glue these to my fa—aw, man—” One of the flowers fell, and the other flopped down too when John frowned in response— “Nuts. There goes my plan to have a purple mustache forever.” 

“You could grow a _real_ mustache and dye it,” Amy pointed out.

Dave side-eyed her. “Please no.”

“I could!” John’s face brightened again. “In fact, I might.” 

“I’d like to let it be known that I do not support this decision.”

“It’ll grow on you.” John rebutted confidently.

Dave shook his head, doing his best not to smile. A flower fell out of his hair and onto his shoulder, and he twisted his head to look at it, befuddled for a moment. “Whuh—” he plucked it off his shoulder and recognized it as _not_ the same flower Amy had put in his hair, and immediately knew what had happened— “ _John…_ ” 

John snickered. “Your back was turned! You should know better.” Dave flicked the flower at him, but he couldn’t stay mad, a smile already tugging at his lips. He reached up and gingerly patted his hair, trying to figure out how many flowers and weeds had been stuck there without knocking any more out. 

“If there’s bugs in my hair I’m gonna put ants in your bed. From the cursed ant farm.” 

John winced. “Please don’t.” 

“I’ll do it,” Dave threatened jokingly. He really wouldn’t, but it was funny to torment John a little bit. He put Dave through the wringer often enough to warrant a little payback every now and then. 

Amy, however, called his bluff. “You wouldn’t.”

“You don’t know that.” Dave tried to keep bluffing. 

“No, I do.” She leaned over and gave him her cutest look, and his defiance completely dissolved under its power. 

“Oh, fine,” he huffed with feigned annoyance, and she gave him a little kiss on the cheek. She pulled back away again with a smile, which he of course returned, because her smile was infectious. Amy then glanced out at the flowers around them and an idea flickered to life across her eyes. 

“David? Will you be my hands for a moment?” 

“Sure, what’s up?” 

She picked up a flower. “I wanna make a flower crown but it’s kind of a two-hand job.” 

Dave shrugged. “Sure, alright.” 

Amy guided Dave through making a flower crown; it was a little difficult for him to not let his own clumsiness get in the way, but she was good at explaining and he was good at following her directions. Specifically hers. He couldn’t give enough of a shit to listen to anyone else except John, sometimes, with the less-stupid plans he cooked up. 

John watched with rapt attention. Their teamwork was fascinating to watch, really. Dave, by John’s perception anyways, was almost always a prickly, grumpy bastard, keeping everyone held _at least_ arm’s length away. That was, in part, why he’d decided to approach Dave in the first place, actually, because he understood keeping that kind of distance—he did it too, with jokes and class-clown bullshit—and, as far as he was aware, he was the first person Dave ever let closer to him than arm’s length. These days he was only vaguely prickly to John, like a hedgehog, equal parts pointy and cuddly if you knew what you were doing. Around Amy, he was much more cuddly. He treated her gently, kindly, and it was honestly a little amazing to see. She really could bring out the best in him on good days. (John could, too, actually, if he really, really tried.) 

He watched them for about five minutes before deciding to spread out and lay down on the unused part of the technically-not-really-a-picnic-blanket they were situated on, shutting his eyes. He lounged, fully enjoying the bright sun and warm ground. The winter had been a damned frigid one, where he barely even wanted to go outside if he could avoid it, so he was absolutely revelling in the warmth. He liked the snow well enough, had a healthy appreciation for all seasons, but he wouldn’t deny always looking forward to spring. 

John didn’t realize he was taking a nap until he woke up to something being gently placed in his hair and the light tones of Amy giggling. He opened his eyes to Dave leaning over him slightly, pulling his hands away from John’s head. He had a very haphazard ring of flowers on his head. “There, now you’re pretty, too,” he said flatly, and John laughed, reaching up to feel a similar bundle of weeds and flowers around his head. 

He sat up, holding the crown in place, then adjusting it to stay. “Thanks, Dave.” 

“It was her idea,” he deflected. 

Amy swatted him. “I asked you if it would be a good idea and you didn’t even hes—”

“She’s lying—”

“You didn’t even take a second to _think_ ,” she was struggling to keep talking through floods of giggles, and John could tell this wasn’t going to be a legitimate argument by how Dave was doing his damnedest not to grin, “you just immediately went ‘oh, absolutely.’”

“If I have to suffer it, so do you,” Dave glanced at John. 

John patted him on the arm. “Whatever protects your masculinity, Dave.” 

Dave rolled his eyes, smacking John’s hand away. “Shut up.”

John twisted his hand around to intertwine his fingers with Dave’s. Dave didn’t seem to pay any attention to it, not acknowledging it other than curling his fingers around John’s hand. Amy shifted the flower crown on her own head. 

Dave reached out to Amy with his free hand, and she lifted her hand, but then John reached out too. He locked eyes with Dave, that infamous I’m-about-to-cause-problems-on-purpose glint in his eyes, and immediately the contest was clear. They both leaned over toward Amy, who was starting to snicker at this, each trying to out-reach the other. 

“My arms are longer than yours,” John pointed out, wiggling his fingers for emphasis. “I’m gonna win.” 

“That doesn’t mean you’re gonna win,” Dave responded. 

“Guys, guys,” Amy giggled, “you don’t have to fight over this.” 

“Yes, we do,” they replied stubbornly, though John was grinning. Dave, however, looked dead serious.

In response, Amy nabbed both their hands in her one hand, barely. She pressed their palms together, wrapping her fingers around theirs. The two stared at the tangle of hands, dumbfounded, and she started laughing even harder. 

“Well, shit. Who won?” John wondered. 

“ _I_ did,” Amy answered smugly. 

The other two exchanged a surprised look. “I… guess she did, huh.” John relented, and Dave nodded (a little grudgingly).

* * *

They got bored of holding hands about five minutes later, with John griping about Dave’s hands being all sweaty. Dave, in response, wiped his sweaty palms on John’s knees. They called it even and lapsed into a comfortable silence.

When it came to people he actually trusted, John wasn’t one to protest having his hair played with. At the time he’d first started growing it out, he’d pretty much _only_ let Dave touch it (because Dave knew how important it was), which Dave didn’t usually want to do, but John could count on him to help untangle anything he couldn’t deal with himself. It wasn’t like Dave _disliked_ helping out, he just always found it a touch too intimate, and it used to really weird him out; he’d gotten more accustomed to it over the years, though, and now it of course wasn’t anything to make a big to-do over. So when Amy, eyeing John’s hair, suggested braiding flowers into it, John was absolutely on board. Convincing Dave took surprisingly little work as well, even though none of them had a hairbrush on hand. Dave just shrugged and said, “I don’t know, I’ll use my hand?”

And that settled that.

John sat cheerfully on the left hand side of the center of the picnic blanket, with his knees folded halfway up to his chest and his arms looped loosely around them, smiling. Dave, behind him with Amy beside him, was sitting up on his knees to get a bit of a height advantage. He carded his fingers through John’s hair in a vain attempt to detangle it, careful not to yank on it.

“I think this is as good as it’ll get,” Dave remarked, gingerly pulling his hand out of another knot. 

Amy shrugged. “Seems good enough. Okay, so, separate it into three sections.”

“All of it?” Dave shot her a glance.

“All of it.” She affirmed, and he shrugged, deferring to her wisdom.

“Ow, hey, gentle.” John winced.

“Sorry, dude.” Dave wriggled his hand to get his finger out of the offending knot, lumping it in one of the three sections. “Okay, now what?”

“So, first take the section in your right hand here, and bring it to cross over the center one, I think. Then let it be the new center one… yeah, like that! Now do the same with that left one… Yep! And do the right one again, then the left one, so on.”

“So it’s just left-right-left-right all the way down?” Dave’s brow furrowed a little in mild concentration.

“Yeah, basically,” Amy answered. “You’re weirdly good at this.” 

He shrugged. “It just looks like a rope.”

“You ever had to make a rope?” John asked, curious.

“Nah, but I know what one looks like. Also there was that one time one of those monsters snipped that really shitty rope we had for a while in half and it entirely unspooled, remember?” 

“Ohhh, riiiight.” John moved to nod, then winced again when he realized Dave was, of course, still gripping his hair. “Oop, sorry.” 

“You got a second hair-tie?”

John wordlessly reached back with his right hand. Amy pulled the black band off his wrist and handed it to Dave, who used it to tie up the end of the braid. It looked about right, mostly. Maybe a little tight, or something? Dave wasn’t sure if it’d be uncomfortable later, but John hadn’t said anything about it feeling bad, so he just went with it.

“Now here’s the fun part,” Amy leaned over and picked a flower, twirling it at Dave with a smile, “making it look all pretty.”

Together they worked to tuck the flowers into the braid in at least some sort of an arrangement. Dave mostly followed Amy’s lead; she had done stuff like this before for cosplays, so he assumed she knew what looked nice. When they were done it was kind of a mess, but it worked. Amy snapped a picture of it so that John could see it, and he was thrilled about it, so Dave counted it a success. 

* * *

After a few more hours the warmth of the afternoon/early-evening sun was starting to get to them. After yawning for the third time in what felt like as many minutes, Dave decided “fuck it, I’m going to take a nap,” and laid down. Amy, of course, almost immediately snuggled up to him, despite proclaiming that she wasn’t tired. John at first kept a respectable, unsuspicious amount of distance, just out of habit, and it was only after five or so minutes of them continuing to chat that he remembered they were lying in a field out in the middle of fucking nowhere. When the conversation wound down to almost nothing, and Amy was clearly dozing off on Dave’s shoulder, John casually nestled in closer to Dave, who, in return, shoved an arm under him, to keep him close. Dave tipped his head back, eyes shut, a partner in each arm, and felt relaxed for once. It was warm out, there was no one around, and it was safe, in terms of both no monsters appearing (yet, anyhow) and no one from Undisclosed who didn’t already know hanging around. Things were alright. He’d take it, however long it lasted.


	17. John and Dave Get Banned From A Butterfly Garden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John and Dave: menace to butterflies everywhere.  
> john/dave/amy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> based on a gloriously terrible conversation Ben (canadaisnolonger on tumblr) and I had & they get Credit for some of the dialogue.  
> tw butterfly death (im kidding but im not)

Going to the butterfly garden was supposed to be a cute date idea. Amy had wanted to go for a while, and it actually didn’t take much work to convince John and Dave to go. The biggest hassle was coordinating a day off, but eventually, in late spring, they got it. 

Unfortunately for Amy, her cute date idea almost immediately went off the rails. John and Dave had no clue what was so important about butterflies, really, beyond looking nice. They were just bugs. Pretty bugs, but bugs nonetheless. So of course they ended up wandering off away from Amy pretty quickly, and while this ordinarily wouldn’t be a problem, today. Today it was going to be a problem. It took almost an hour for John to get bored enough for the mischief-making synapses of his brain to fire up, but once they did, they compensated for the lost time.

The beginning of the end was this: John and Dave had meandered to the opposite side of the garden from Amy, who was taking the time to read all the little informational placards and such scattered throughout the garden’s grounds. Dave had skimmed a couple, but didn’t find anything particularly interesting and soon gave up. He had kind of hoped for a placard that would confirm or deny that one thing he read somewhere on the internet (or maybe John told him?) about how butterflies could drink blood. It had kinda freaked him out so he was hoping to find something that at least off-handedly mentioned it, like, “hey, you read somewhere that butterflies were actually vampires or some shit? Don’t sweat it! That’s a total lie. Carry on admiring the brightly-coloured winged caterpillars now.” But he didn’t. 

They paused in a small clearing that held one bench. It was occupied by an elderly woman, or else Dave would’ve immediately sat his lazy ass down. He didn’t really like this much walking for no reason. Plus it was pretty warm in here, presumably for the bugs’ comfort, and he was starting to sweat. 

John looked at the butterflies flitting by. Dave tried to track one in particular but quickly lost sight of it. “They’re awful pretty, aren’t they?” John observed. 

“Yeah,” Dave nodded. 

There was a pause. John’s eyes flicked from the butterflies, to Dave, back to the butterflies, back to Dave again. “I dare you to eat one.” 

Dave looked at him like he was nuts. “No way, shitbird. _You_ eat one.”

“I dared you first!”

“Fuck off.” 

“Okay—What if we _both_ ate one?” 

Dave paused, still staring at John like he’d lost his mind, but he was starting to get that well-what-harm-could-it-do look about him and John knew he would cave eventually. “What the fuck.” 

“Don’t you at least wanna know what it tastes like?” 

“Not really.” 

“Too chicken?” 

Dave glared at him. John grinned. “I’m not too scared to eat a fuckin’ butterfly—”

“Prove it.” 

“What if _you’re_ too scared? Huh? You’re gonna make _me_ do it ‘cause _you’re_ scared.”

“ _I’m_ not scared either!”

_“Prove it.”_

They had reached an impasse, each defiantly staring the other down, and in that moment of prolonged eye contact they came to a silent decision.

“I mean—We can’t kill more than one, right? Like, this is already pretty morally-grey,” Dave began. 

“Oh, of course not, I mean, it’d be hard to pass off _two_ as some kind of accident. We’ll share one.” John said it like it was the most matter-of-fact thing in the world, totally normal.

* * *

“Well?” John held the butterfly on his finger aloft.

Dave looked at it mournfully. He realized he didn’t want to eat this poor bug but he couldn’t back out now, lest John hold it over his head until the end of time. “I’m sorry,” he whispered to it. 

John snickered. “C’mon, man. Bon appetit.” 

Dave wasn’t sure what was more unpleasant: the sheer concept of eating a living bug, the unpleasant crunch and taste of it, or the fact he had to practically kiss John to eat the butterfly. Either way, it was a bizarrely intimate moment, especially when Dave glanced up to see if John was looking at him or the bug and realized John was, indeed, looking at him. 

The romantic moment was interrupted abruptly by the consequences of their actions.

A little crowd had gathered after the elderly woman, who had witnessed the entirety of this debacle from conception to execution, gasped loudly and yelled out “they just ate a butterfly!” which is, as it turns out, the best way to make everyone in a butterfly garden look in your direction. 

“ _What_ are you two _doing_?!” Amy yelled, running over as if she could stop the two dumbasses from what they were already in the middle of doing. 

“I DON’T KNOW, OKAY?!” Dave shouted back, then spluttered on the terrible bitter taste still in his mouth. 

At the same time Dave was doing that, John supplied his own answer, screaming, “WE’RE HAVING A MOMENT!” 

Amy wished that she had two hands, if only so she could face-palm twice. Or smack the both of them at the same time. Before she could say so, though, she realized two things: one, a small crowd was gathered, because of course that would happen in an otherwise-tranquil butterfly garden, and two, there was a security guard charging right for them. She really hoped they weren’t all about to get arrested or something. 

The guard shouldered through the small ring of people around them and fixed John and Dave with a death glare. “I’m going to have to ask you to come with me,” he seethed, with that sort of calm rage that someone has when they’re doing their best to remain professional and not cause a scene but would, in any other circumstance, absolutely haul off and kick your ass. John and Dave glanced at each other, Dave looking far guiltier than John. The guard caught sight of the exasperated Amy and asked her, with slightly less anger, “Are you with them?” 

“Unfortunately.” She sighed. John smiled a little sheepishly; Dave examined his shoes. 

“Come with me, the three of you.” 

* * *

They got to watch as their photos were tacked up on the “Do Not Allow These People Entry” board. Amy tried not to be too devastated, but it really did sting just a bit. She sighed and told herself to remember how great the hour-or-so she’d gotten in there had been. That was _something_ , at least.

John tried to cheer her up, proposing all sorts of schemes to get back into the garden—including but not limited to theatrical disguises, pretending to be each other, pretending to be one monstrously tall person in the world’s longest trench coat, and simply sneaking in the back door—so she knew he felt guilty about it. She knew Dave felt bad too because he kept looking at his feet and mumbled an extremely sad “I’m sorry, Amy” to her as they were escorted out. 

But it was kinda funny, she had to admit. 

“I feel really shitty.” Dave said as they were walking away. “Like, I’m so guilty I’m gonna throw up.” 

“Don’t be a weenie,” John nudged him, still trying his damnedest to lighten the mood.

“No, I mean I _really_ don’t—” Dave cut himself off as he felt that telltale sort of a _kick_ on the inside and he sprang for the nearest trash can, leaning over it right as his lunch came back up. 

John wasn’t usually a sympathy-vomiter, but despite him giving Dave shit for being a queasy weenie, in actuality, John wasn’t feeling quite so well either, and watching his best friend yak was what sent him over the edge. Luckily, there was more than one trash can nearby, and so Amy was stuck looking from one vomiting dumbass to the other in mild anguish. She was of course sympathetic to them—she of all people knew puking was no fun—but at the same time, _goshdarnit they did this to themselves AND got them all banned from the butterfly garden._

“What butterfly did you even eat?” She wondered aloud.

Dave lifted his head a bit. “Orange.” He heaved again and she winced. “And black.” 

She paused. “A monarch? Did you two idiots eat _a monarch butterfly?”_ Amy wanted to face-palm again.

“Yeah!” John almost turned to look at her but then he threw up again. “Ugh, god.” 

“Oh my god.” She groaned and rubbed her face, then pulled out her phone for a quick Google search just to double-check. “Yeah, those are _poisonous_ , guys.” 

Dave jolted in alarm. “Do we need to go to the hospital?” 

“No, but throwing up is your _real_ penalty for being this stupid.” Amy sighed, tucking her phone back into her pocket. “You’ll be fine.” 

And they were, after a solid few minutes of throwing up and some more minutes of just dry-heaving. They bought a bottle of water from a kiosk selling funnel cake and the like, and rinsed their mouths out, then went home because the two still felt pretty queasy. It was a real bonding experience for the three of them, all things considered. A clip of the incident, blurry they-were-in-the-background-of-a-real-video footage, circulated on the internet for a short while, and every time he stumbled on it again, John would send it in their group chat along with a message like “haha remember The Butterfly Kiss Incident?” and regardless of how many times Dave threatened to beat him to death over it he was never dissuaded from reliving the moment.


	18. Whoops

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John tries to prank Dave. It backfires.  
> john/dave/amy  
> based on smth me and Sibling canadaisnolonger talked about cause it just Killed Me its so funny

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: alcohol  
> also i headcanon john has heterochromia (his eyes are blue with brown bits in them) simply cause i think thatd be Cool

John was, and had always been, the sort of person to appreciate having spice in his life. He honestly had almost welcomed the whole monster-fighting debacle, if only for how exciting it could be. Granted, it wasn’t so exciting when Dave and Amy were in danger, but still. He liked having something _new_ happening. 

So when he went a little too long without something bizarre and life-threatening happening, he tended to make up his own ways of injecting newness into his life. Sometimes it was dangerous, on the same level as building his own jetpack, and sometimes it was mundane, on the same level as the time he decided he’d start every phone call with a loud “heyyyooooo” no matter how many times Dave would interrupt him mid ‘yooo’ to tell him to knock it off. This was along the lines of the more mundane, fortunately. 

He’d decided to take up saying weird shit every time he hugged someone, which was more often than you’d figure. He’d whisper it, really quietly, into their ear (or as close as he could get). Just for the sake of the reaction. His favourite to over-use was “I think of you every time I poop,” which he had to put on hold for a bit once someone who he won’t name and shame threatened to beat the hell out of him if he did it to them again. (No, it wasn’t Dave, surprisingly.) For the most part, other than that guy, it went over pretty well. It’d get a laugh, or a weird look and then a laugh once he claimed he was joking, and things would move on. It was just a fun little thing, and thinking up new weird shit was also fun as hell. Sometimes he could even get a snicker out of Dave for it. The best moment to come of all that, or at least in the top ten, was the time he whispered to Dave, “I always knew you’d die in my arms.” 

Dave didn’t miss a beat and whispered back, “Try it and I’ll fucking take you down with me, bitch.” 

John laughed so fucking hard he almost threw up. What made it even funnier was he knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that Dave was absolutely serious on some level. 

That being said, there was one instance where it well and truly backfired. John had thought it would be really funny, hilarious even, if he were to whisper “Please help me” and then pull away with a smile like nothing was wrong. It worked to unnerve the shit out of a couple of his less-close friends, earning a nervous laugh after a “Just kidding!” whenever he felt the need to dispense one. The amount of genuity in the tone varied from person to person depending on if John felt like he got enough of a reaction out of them.

In hindsight, he _probably_ should have known better than to try that one on Dave. 

It was a Tuesday evening, the night John and Dave usually went to whatever bar they felt like going to before heading over to one of their homes, or splitting up for the evening depending on if John wanted to hit up a party. Though, John did that less as of late, for obvious reasons. He was waiting for Dave outside the bar, standing beside his motorcycle, and he grinned in delight as he watched Dave’s newest shitty used SUV pull into a space, both because he was stoked to see his best friend again and because he was thrilled to try this one out on Dave. “Dave! Buddy!” He yelled, arms out, really hoping Dave wouldn’t push him away because his reaction to this one was definitely going to be priceless. Dave stepped out of his car, and it must have been a good day for him, because he just rolled his eyes and accepted the hug readily. John leaned in really close to his ear and, trying not to grin too wide or laugh and fuck it up, gave his best impression of what he thought he sounded like when terrified. “Please help me.” 

Dave stiffened immediately, which wasn’t exactly expected, but still within the realm of possible reactions. John figured he’d most likely pull away with a ‘what the fuck’ look on his face, or he’d say something of a similar sentiment, but instead when they pulled away and John was all smiles, Dave gave him a wide-eyed careful stare, hands still on John’s arms. John beamed. Dave stared flatly. Intensely. Finally he spoke, in a low voice, in that concerned tone he had when shit hit the fan really badly, and it was beginning to dawn on John that this joke was probably not going to go over well. “What’s going on?” 

“I’m kidding, dude,” he tried, and then to his surprise Dave dragged him in close for another hug, apparently not giving a damn about how weird (and gay) that would look. 

“What’s going on?” He hissed into John’s ear this time. 

“It’s just a joke, honest,” John started laughing a little in disbelief, trying to pull away again. After an awkward moment wherein Dave wasn’t letting go, he finally released John, but still kept his hands on his arms, giving him a serious look. John giggled. “Seriously! I’m just kidding, Dave, it’s fine!” He was trying not to laugh too loud, lest they draw any more attention, but the shock was getting to him and, honestly, _that_ made it a little funny. 

Dave finally let go of him altogether. “Alright.” John thought for a moment that that would be that, but Dave then continued, “You’re staying over at my place tonight, though.” 

John chuckled, at first assuming Dave wasn’t being serious, but Dave didn’t join in, just stared John down firmly. “Okay, okay, man.” John couldn’t help but smile, though. It was kinda touching, in a way. “Let’s go get wasted first, though.” 

* * *

They walked home from the bar, because neither wanted to drive drunk, and they presumed nobody would want to steal Dave’s shitty car. According to John, _everyone_ knew who drove his motorcycle and, in his mind anyways, wouldn’t want to fuck with him. Because he was badass. Dave didn’t try to argue the point, so John decided he must be right, even though it was definitely just because arguing with John took more energy than Dave had at the time. 

The night was quiet, the sky dark and speckled with off-white stars, wispy clouds barely masking them or the half-moon that hung high in the sky. Its light peered down on them from up high, drowned out in places by the streetlamps below it. They walked in silence for a while, both thinking their own personal drunken thoughts, until John pointed up at one cloud and announced, “That one looks like a dick.” 

It did indeed look like a dick. Dave laughed. 

“Hey, remember when we practically fuckin’ destroyed that street lamp?” John gestured. 

“Yeah,” Dave grinned. “In our defense, they really should make the bulbs like, way stronger. If they can be taken out by a couple baseballs, what are they good for?”

John snickered and tossed an arm around Dave’s shoulders. “We should do that again sometime. That was so much fun.” 

Dave leaned into him. “Yeah.” For a moment he was wrapped up in that memory. It had been fun, some weird post-party shit; that evening, John had dragged him to someone’s house party for whatever reason. He claimed it was that Dave needed to get out of the house, go be social, but he’d _really_ insisted that time, even though Dave seriously dragged his feet, when usually he’d just give up and settle for passive-aggressively telling him the next day how dope the party was. Dave couldn’t really figure out why he was so adamant this time. He didn’t dwell on it, either. But either somebody at the party brought a baseball bat and some baseballs or John just sort of stole them (he’d say ‘borrowed’) from the house—it was really hard to tell with him—and they’d ended up whacking the balls back and forth to each other, until John had the bright idea to see if they could smack them right into the streetlights. Dave wasn’t sure why he went along with it. Maybe he just wanted a little chaos, too, for once. 

He came back to reality when he remembered they were supposed to be walking to his house, and John had paused to light up a cigarette, trying to do so one-handed with his other arm still around Dave. He had dropped the carton on the ground. “Dude, just let go of me,” Dave snorted, ducking out from his grip to pick up the carton and give it back. 

John nabbed the carton from him, fumbling a little, then tucked it back into his pocket. “Thanks.” He then promptly slung an arm around Dave’s shoulder again. “Where are we going, again?” 

“My place, dumbass.” Dave guided him along. 

* * *

The front stairs creaked as they walked up to the door, supporting each other, though they’d both sobered up a little bit by the time they’d reached his place. They paused at the front door and Dave rifled through his pockets for the keys. John leaned against the wall beside the door, peering up at the sky, lit by the flickering porch light. He turned his focus closer to him, watching moths dance around the little faux-lantern light, smacking their faces into the clouded, dirty glass. Dave glanced to him, key in the lock already, and paused before turning it, just blankly staring at John for a moment. He looked tired, in a good way, the kind of tired you get after a really great day, when you’re ready to fall into a pleasant deep sleep.

Dave unlocked the front door. John looked over, then smiled and straightened up to follow Dave inside, shutting and locking the door behind them.

The couch Dave had gotten from somebody’s yard sale was halfway a fold-out bed. They were pretty sure it was supposed to open up all the way, and just wouldn’t, because it was broken or something, but either way, it unfolded enough to hold two people if they squished together, and their combined weight would keep it unfolded. They’d done it a couple times before—boys’ night sleepovers weren’t at all unusual—so they knew it worked, or at least, it hadn’t backfired yet. They worked together to unfold it and then both flopped down, Dave first with John ending up halfway on top of him. This too wasn’t unusual. They settled in, almost immediately comfortable, and a silence lapsed for a moment.

“Hey, John,” Dave started, in that tone he had when he was out of it and fairly certain he was going to say something profound, “d’you ever think ab—” 

John grabbed Dave’s head, fingers stretched across his scalp, palm on his forehead, and Dave’s mouth snapped shut, face going blank, as John pulled his head closer. “I have never had a _single_ thought in my _entire_ life, Dave.” 

“Your breath smells like booze.” Dave was unphased. John paused for a moment, realizing their foreheads were pressed together. He stared directly into Dave’s eyes and Dave stared sleepily back, blinking a little confusedly. “What?” He finally asked. 

“Your eyes are pretty,” John said plainly. 

Dave processed that, and then snickered, like he didn’t believe John. “Sure, dude.” 

“Now you listen to me, you stupid beautiful motherfucker,” John squished his forehead into Dave’s, barrelling on even as Dave started laughing harder, “your eyes are _very_ pretty and you _will_ believe me.” 

“They’re just fuckin’ _brown_ ,” Dave turned his head to escape John’s grip. “They’re not—It’s nothing exciting. You’ve got those fuckin’, _two-toned_ eyes, dude, like a fucking. Eyeball model.” 

John wheezed as Dave pulled his head back, still chuckling. “Eyeball model… Holy shit. That’s great. You’re great.” John nestled his head into Dave’s shoulder, retracting his hand from Dave’s head to rest it on his chest. “You’re _really_ great, man.” 

Dave tipped his head to one side to rest his cheek against John’s forehead, and John felt Dave wiggle an arm under him, but he was already starting to pass out. He was completely gone by the time that arm traveled wherever it was destined to go.

* * *

John woke up with a massive hangover and someone’s arm around him. He yawned and rubbed his face and realized it was Dave’s arm. Blinking sleep out of his eyes, he glanced over and restrained a laugh at Dave’s openmouthed snoring. His other arm hung off the couch, knuckles grazing the ground, and his head was lolled back, forehead pressed into the armrest. It was charming in that stupid-looking way Dave usually was. John shifted to drape his arm over Dave with a little hum, shutting his eyes again. Maybe he could sleep a little more and he’d be less hungover when he woke up again. 

The next time he woke up, Dave was awake, and scrolling on his almost-entirely-shattered phone, fingers deftly avoiding the biggest cracks thanks to fuck-knows-how-much trial and error. John blinked blearily for a moment, a bit of a headache thumping at his temples and behind his eyes, before mumbling hoarsely, “What’s up?” 

“Hey.” Dave greeted him with similarly low energy, moving the arm underneath John to rub his shoulder. John hummed quietly. It was nice to just rest in this state, for a moment. Relaxing together without threat of impending monster doom or some jackass saying something obscene was nice. These sorts of quiet moments with his best friend were some of John’s favourites. 

“Hey, you two awake yet?” Amy’s voice dragged John to lift his head and smile at her. Dave set his phone down on his chest to take a cup of water from her. She smiled back at them. John rolled back a bit to take a second cup of water from her, which she had been holding between her elbow and her ribs. “How was it?” She sat down on the floor next to the sofa. 

“Good, you know, fun times,” John shrugged. He couldn’t actually remember a lot of the specifics, just the feeling. Dave mumbled in agreement as he took a sip of water, trying his best not to spill it all over himself. He only succeeded a little. 

John hauled himself up into a more upright position, and Dave took the cue to do the same. They settled in sitting on the couch like normal and Amy got up to join them, flopping down next to Dave. “Need an aspirin? Either of you?” 

John nodded politely. His head was still aching just a bit. 

“I’m okay, thanks,” Dave answered. 

Amy came back in a moment with a pill for John, which he took gratefully. They sat together for a long stretch of time, John and Dave recovering and Amy simply enjoying their company. 

“Where did you guys go?” Amy tilted her head to one side a little, curious. 

“That place near the weird religious craft store,” John supplied. “Pretty good, actually.” 

Dave nodded in agreement. “We should go back if we’re not banned. I don’t remember what we did.”

“Me neither,” John shrugged. After a moment’s pause, though, he perked up, suddenly remembering, then started snickering. “Amy—” She leaned past Dave to look at him— “I tried the ‘please help me’ prank on him.” 

Amy laughed in a mixture of mirth and surprise. Dave punched him gently on the arm. “It wasn’t funny, shitbird, I thought you were really in danger.” 

He didn’t seem too deeply annoyed, though, so John shook it off with a smile. “Sweet to know you care, David,” he teased lightly. Dave glared, but it dissipated the moment Amy wrapped her arm around one of his. 

“I’m glad you’re _not_ in danger, but don’t pull that shit again.” Dave warned, extending a hand to John.

“Alright.” John laced his fingers between Dave’s. “I won’t. Promise. Next time I say that, I’ll _really_ be up shit creek without a paddle.” 

Dave ran his thumb over one of John’s knuckles. “Good, good. Except try _not_ to be up shit creek without a paddle, thanks.” 

John tossed his head back in a laugh. “Yeah, yeah…”


	19. who the fuck gave John a camera

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A YouTube video with 10 views and a 1:5 like:dislike ratio 
> 
> (the one like is John)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i dunno this concept just kinda Possessed me, i wanted to try writing a .. a sort of text description of a youtube video.  
> ive been watching way too many youtube videos of people dickin around in abandoned buildings man--  
> anyways. implied john/dave/amy but really only if you squint, this is just goofy fun really nothing Consequential

“—and where’d you even _get_ that?” Dave was saying as the recording began. 

“I have a guy,” John answered. The camera watched the streets of Undisclosed blurring past before turning around as John leaned forward, trying to wedge it in the corner of the dashboard. It took a couple minutes but eventually he pulled back with a satisfied grunt, revealing most of the ever-tired-looking, pale, chubby form of Dave in the driver’s seat, who hadn’t yet noticed this development. “Anyways. So!” John clapped his hands, invariably drawing attention back to him. “We’re gonna investigate this old house that got flooded like twenty years ago or something.” 

“Not _that_ long ago,” Dave corrected. “But yeah, nobody’s lived there in a while.” 

“I met a guy, he crashed there for a night or two and said he saw some weird shit.” Then John adopted what Dave would describe as a melodramatic documentary narrator voice. “He told me, in full confidence—this anonymous man whose name was _not_ Jason—that when he stayed the night, he heard footsteps upstairs, but when he went up there he didn’t find anyone, _and_ there was a monster in the basement.” 

There was a slight pause. John stared intently at the camera, dramatically. “Really? Is that all he said?” Dave interjected blandly, glancing over at John. 

“He ran outta there screaming,” John replied a little defensively, shooting Dave an annoyed look. There was a rumble as the car turned, light washing across the both of them. They both squinted in the sudden brightness. “He said he didn’t even get a good look at the thing in the basement.”

“Could’ve just been a different homeless guy,” Dave pointed out apathetically, then added, in a quiet and annoyed tone, “Probably _was_.”

“You don’t know th—” 

“I’m not getting stabbed in an abandoned house.”

“We won’t get stabbed. I _told_ you, it’s John-and-Dave weirdness!” 

“Does _not_ make it any less likely that we’ll get stabbed.” The car slowed to a stop. The radio could finally be heard through the road noise. “I’m not in frame, right?” Dave glanced over suspiciously. 

John paused for a little too long, eyeing the camera. “No,” he lied. Dave’s expression didn’t change but he looked at the road instead. “Anyway. As I was saying,” John adopted his faux professional tone again. “It’s serious business. We, John and Dave, the Supernaturalists—”

“Not our fuckin’ name.”

“Shut _up_ , Dave. We, John and Dave, the Supernaturalists, are going to—” John cut off suddenly as Dave floored it. “ _Asshole_. Fine!” The theatrics melted from him for a moment. “We’re gonna poke around and see if there’s any monsters or if the dude was just nuts or super fuckin’ high or something.” 

Dave snickered a little and John scowled at him. The camera rattled a bit, threatening to fall, and John grabbed it, setting it in his lap, treating it to a great view right up his nose as he looked down at it. “How can I pau—”

The footage hard-cut to the exterior of the house, wind noise rattling through the camera mic. The quick snap of a car door slamming heralded Dave exiting the car, but the camera remained trained on the house. Weathered exterior, shattered windows, holes in the roof and a front door left ajar. It was likely a pleasant-looking place once, but now the siding was rotten and falling-apart, window shutters hanging on by one thread if not gone altogether. The colour was likely once just a very light one, maybe even white, but now it was just grey and dirty-looking. The sound of the trunk raising seemed to prompt John to turn his focus towards what was actually happening. The camera panned to reveal the trunk of the car and Dave standing over it, one hand on the door, looking down with a furrowed brow. He reached down and picked up a nail-filled bat wrapped in sheets of yellowing paper as John stepped around the rear of the car, training the camera on the weapons-laden trunk. Sunlight gleamed off an alarming amount of metal. “Let’s seeeeeee…” John stepped closer, then reached in and nabbed a gun. Dave leaned past him, picking up the boombox nestled in the corner, behind a taillight. 

There was some fumbling; the camera was trained into the corner of the trunk as John reached for something else. Dave then put the boombox back with a groan. “Dead batteries.” 

“Aw, shit. Any spares?” The camera swung about again, John putting it down to, presumably, help look for batteries. 

“Uhhh… nope. Shit.” 

“Fuck.”

“Well—”

“Good job, Dave.” 

“Wh—How’s it—”

“It’s your car, your boombox, _you_ should keep spare batteries back here!” 

Dave sounded defensive. “I usually _do_! We used them all last time we had to change batteries.” There was more fumbling and then John picked up the camera again. The trunk was slammed and John hefted the camera to look at the house again. Dave stepped past him and the crunch of leaves under his feet trailed him as he stepped into frame, headed for the house. He paused partway and glanced back, grimacing in the sunlight. “You gonna get over here or just stand there like an asshole film major?” 

“I’m trying to get a good shot, shitbird, and your fatass is ruining it.” 

“Either you come in here with me or I’m going home.” 

The camera lowered to a shoe-gaze framing as John trudged over to Dave. The grass was still green, but littered with fallen reddish leaves. John was, of course, wearing tie-dyed crocs with a few of those custom crocs decorative plugs stuck in the holes. The view lifted again to see the porch and Dave’s back as he gingerly stepped up the stairs, looking down like he expected them to collapse under him. They certainly creaked and groaned like they were planning to, but the two passed through the threshold with no problems. The camera swung back and forth in the front hall like John wanted the viewer to have the same experience he and Dave were having, looking to and fro for danger. The movement was motion-sickness-inducing. It took a moment for the camera to adjust to the dimness of the indoors, but when it did, it revealed a decaying staircase stretching upward, the remnants of what was probably a little cabinet meant to put your shoes and hat in, peeling wallpaper lining a narrow hallway. The walls were greenish at one point in time, but the mold growing was an ominous, dark colour. “Ugh, christ,” Dave put a hand over his nose. 

“Reeks of mold’n’shit,” John supplied, for the camera’s sake. 

“Yeah.” 

John turned the camera to the right, catching a quick glimpse of the room in that direction, a blur of green and brown, before stepping into the room on the left, swinging the camera around to face front again. They paused for a moment there. Or, Dave did, looking around, and John didn’t notice at first, almost bumping into Dave. He backed up a pace. “What’s up?” 

“Thought I heard something.” 

“What, like—” the camera approached Dave’s face as he turned to look at John— “footsteps, upstairs?” 

The angle was close enough that Dave’s offwhite teeth were really the only thing in frame, all chipped edges and gaps from hard-enough-hits and years of inattentiveness, as he snapped, “Get that thing out of my face, asshole.” His hand came up and covered the lens, leaving a slight smudge, and he pushed it away, with an unpleasant sound, plastic grinding inches from one’s ears. 

“Hey, don’t fuckin’ _break_ it!” John answered in a tone rife with indignance, and then the view tilted yet again, dizzyingly, to the most unflattering angle of his face as he peered down into the lens with a mildly concerned look. He lifted the hem of his shirt to rub against the lens for a moment as Dave kept talking, more faintly in the background. 

“You want it not broken, don’t stick it in my face,” he was grumbling as he walked away, footsteps growing fainter. “Not my responsibility to…” He was officially too far away as John hefted the camera again in another dizzying blur. It seemed to right itself as he got a good enough grip, angled slightly downward, peering down at the moldy carpet of the house for a moment. He stepped forward, following Dave, and every step made the warped floorboards groan with loud, loud protest. The camera panned up to a stained cloudy mirror, revealing John in all his vaguely-greasy, gap-toothed glory, wearing a baseball hat on backwards, long blonde hair curling out from under it like a frizzy curtain around his shoulders, snagging slightly on the material of his reddish-orangeish t-shirt. He grinned and waved. The camera panned away, revealing the rest of what seemed to be a very water-damaged dining room. It was likely once quite lovely, but now the wallpaper was peeling, hardwood floors twisted and gnarled, wooden furniture warped, fabric stained with mold and dirt and debris. There had once been a chandelier that had, evidently, been ripped from the ceiling somehow, smashing the table below. A shame, really; it looked to have been some very nice dark wood. 

There was a crash and the sound of Dave yelling “Fuck!” at the top of his lungs. The view blurred again as John hustled into the next room, where Dave was cursing, trying to haul his leg out of a splinter-filled hole in the ground he’d presumably just made by stepping just wrong on a fragile plank. John shuffled to the edge of it, and the camera tilted, showing mostly his shoes and Dave’s leg as he extended a hand to help his friend back up. “Alright, the floor’s shittier than I thought,” Dave growled a little breathlessly, backing away from the hole warily. 

“You could’ve gone right to the basement, man,” John zoomed in on the hole. It was far too dark to see inside. “Damn.” 

Dave grumbled something unintelligible that John didn’t feel like asking after. “Wonder if the upstairs will be even worse,” he remarked, zooming back out. 

“Maybe.” Dave paced back into view as John lifted the camera, panning around the room. It was a living room, probably. There was a destroyed old tube TV sitting on a video cabinet. The doors on it were opened, spilling DVD cases (some of which were spilling their DVDs) onto the destroyed carpet. The couch had been waterlogged, obviously, and now bore terrible stains from it, but it had already been quite the ugly green colour, so it wasn’t any loss. The walls here were also peeling, picture frames smashed on the floor; a bookshelf had overturned at some point, either in the flood or from some other idiot coming through. The camera panned back to a window behind the couch, broken, sunlight streaming in. The wispy white curtains were torn, tattered, fluttering in the breeze like ghostly fingers reaching into the room. Something creaked and the view snapped back to see Dave stepping gingerly over the bookshelf, steadying himself on a stained doorframe as he stepped into the kitchen, sneakers squeaking on tile now. “Gross,” he commented about something. John followed him and soon saw what: dirty dishes had been left in the sink, a veritable ecosystem just vibing in the center of the kitchen. The floors were a quite nice tile, or they had been, at one point. They were likely white in the beginnings of their life, now yellowy-grey. Wood cabinets, white linoleum countertops, stainless-steel appliances, a greyish-white fridge. Probably was pretty nice, once. 

One of the cabinets stood ajar. Dave tried to shut it, looking bored, but it flopped back open and he shrugged. The camera peered into the cabinets, getting a good look at some slightly-busted plates and cups before moving on. Something creaked and John turned the camera to Dave, who had pried open a door at the end of the kitchen and was peering down into it. “Oh. Huh,” he commented, like he’d been expecting something else. John stepped up beside him to peer into the doorway as well.

It was a door to a cellar or basement or something. The stairs were wooden, relatively unremarkable save for the damage; the walls concrete, the floor too far away to properly see. It was unlit—no windows. “Water down there,” John said absently. The camera zoomed in; there was indeed water up to the second step, glimmering faintly in the light the opened doorway offered. 

“I’m not goin’ in there.” Dave replied flatly, in that stubborn tone he used when he was extremely done with the bullshit they were handling. 

“Suit yourself,” John replied, zooming back out before starting down the stairs.

“Don’t fuckin—” Dave started, but John sped up, footsteps clunking loudly on the rotting wooden stairs, and Dave groaned. “God _damn_ you.” There was more creaking of half-rotted wood, far more hesitant than John’s steps, as John stepped into the water with light splashes. 

“Ooh, that’s cold.” A flashlight clicked on, illuminating dark water and a small basement. There were waterlogged boxes and shelving units, some bits of debris floating in the water, bobbing along the ripples John’s legs made as he meandered around. 

“Aw,” John zoomed in on a stuffed animal head floating by. “Oh, that’s fuckin’ sad.” The camera panned over to see Dave, peering warily down into the water like he was convinced something would attack him any second now, hands up towards his chest, balled into fists around the bat propped on his shoulder. “Hey.” Dave’s head snapped up to look at John and for a moment his eyes flashed in the light of the flashlight. John didn’t notice. “You look like a wuss.” 

“Fuck you.” 

John started laughing, sloshing his way back over to Dave. “Nothing fun down here, anyway.” 

Of course, that was the moment something fun started to happen. 

In less than a second there was a heavy splash behind them. The view whirled around again and suddenly all was dark, splashing, and confusion. Yelling, a gunshot, John yelping a loud “Let go of me!” and suddenly they were both scrambling up the stairs, Dave dragging John along, hauling him all the way up. The view tumbled as they flopped onto the kitchen floor, there was the sound of a door slamming and then both of them wheezing.

“Damn near dropped the camera,” John grunted, peering down into it again, sitting up a little to check it wasn’t damaged. Dave rose behind him, then his arm retracted from John’s shoulders as he got up, nudging John off of him. “It’s all good, though.” 

“Too bad.” Dave replied blandly. There was a clattering noise of some kind, the sound of Dave picking up the bat again.

“Don’t be a dick,” John got up and leveled the camera at the door. Dave’s footsteps heading away from the basement door could be heard as John continued, “That was the beginning of the weird shit. Uh…Hope the camera got it.” The camera tilted back up for a moment, then down to his shoes, and he mumbled, “Wait, is there a way I can—”

Another hard cut. The view jerked jauntily from side to side as John climbed the steps, camera pointed carelessly to his feet. Dave was speaking, barely audible over the creaking of the steps; “...probably for the best, anyways. Who the hell would we show the footage to?” 

“I dunno. Amy?” John offered. 

“No way in hell. She’d get all afraid for us and shit.” They came out onto the upstairs landing, Dave shuffling to one side to let John join him in a narrow hallway.

“Yeah, true. She’s sweet that way.” The hall was also wooden, but seemed much less water-damaged than the first floor. Likely the floodwaters hadn’t gone up this high, given the damage lessened considerably halfway up the stairs. “Whaddaya think the phantom footsteps are?” 

“Settling floorboards,” Dave replied unimaginatively. He was already walking away, heading down the hall. John stepped halfway into the first door, right in front of the end of the staircase, to see a tiny bathroom. It was just a toilet, mirror and sink. Nothing too exciting, and pretty difficult to see. John ducked back out and followed Dave down a short hallway into a guest bedroom. A thick layer of dust coated everything. Up here, the walls were intact, painted a greying blue. The camera slowly panned from left to right, landing first on the two windows along that back wall, offering very little light through thick velvety-blue curtains. Between them sat a dark wooden dresser, a little busted-up, drawers left ajar with one of them on the floor. Whatever had been in there had been looted long ago. There sat one very dusty bed with a powder-blue quilt, beside it a nightstand with a brass lamp and white lampshade. The wall above the bed held some scrawled graffiti, unreadable from the doorway. John stepped around the door to reveal Dave stepping back from the closet, giving it one last once-over with his eyes before turning back to John. “Nothing here.” 

“Nothing? Not even a Scrabble board?” John stepped over to shove the camera in the closet for a better look. It was too dark to see easily, but the closet seemed empty, with maybe some crumpled clothes and hangers on the floor.

“Some graffiti saying ‘Jess was here’ and that’s about it.” Dave was already walking away.

“Aha, yeah.” John zoomed in on that graffiti, a Sharpie scrawl at a jaunty angle along the wall. “Neat. Hi, Jess. You’re being immortalized in _The Supernaturalists Documentary.”_

“No.” Dave intoned flatly from across the room. The camera swung to catch the back of Dave as he walked out of the room. John ignored his departure in favour of walking to the bed, leaning over to read some of the lewd graffiti. It was pretty much what was to be expected of an abandoned bedroom location. John snickered over it for a few minutes too long before he was, once again, startled by something loud in another room. That something being Dave again, yelling, “Oh shit!”

John scuttled out of the room as fast as he could, heading for the other end of the hall. The door to that room was mostly shut but Dave yelling and the sounds of violence—of a nail-filled bat whacking something fleshy—could be heard. John kicked the door open in a blur of movement and paused for a second, letting the camera rest on the sight before him. 

From the waist down, the thing was a normal person, though the slacks it was wearing looked right out of some 50’s fashion catalogue. From the waist-up, however, it was attacking Dave with a bunch of appendages that could’ve been reddish-greyish tentacles or could’ve been its literal intestines. It was moving too fast and getting bludgeoned by Dave’s frantic swings too much to really get a good look at what the appendages could be, but either way, Dave was yelling varied insults at the top of his lungs, thrashing in its grip, and despite all his struggles it was clearly starting to win, just due to its sheer mass. It had more tentacles than he had arms, after all. John rushed over after getting a good three-or-so seconds of the fight, and then all descended into blurry chaos and yelling again. Notably the camera went flying when the beast struck John hard enough to knock him into the wall, and he didn’t bother to pick it up again as he rushed back into action. The rest of the fight was trained mostly on their shoes, until Dave toppled backward with enough force to jostle the camera where it sat, a mini shockwave from the force of the fall. The bat clattered from his grip but didn’t roll much. He lay there stunned and stupid for a moment, having whacked his head on the floor, and John stepped halfway over him. A gunshot was heard and the beast staggered back with a horrific inhuman screech. “Yeah, motherfucker!” John yelled. “Step off!” 

It of course did not ‘step off’ and, after a second to gather its wits about it, tried to rush forward again, only to collapse at a second gunshot. By this point Dave had come to his senses and struggled to sit up, leaning over to nab his bat again. John stepped menacingly toward the beast—or, well, he stepped as menacingly as a guy in crocs can step—and kept yelling. “Stay down, bitch! We’ve won!” The tentacles of the thing writhed just barely in-frame until one bonked the camera and spun it, bringing into view a blurry mass of goop and blood as the thing presumably bled out. “Should I shoot it again, Dave? I’m gonna shoot it again.” 

“Don’t do that,” Dave managed, and there was a scraping, dragging noise, presumably as he heaved himself to his feet, “we need to save the bullets.” 

“I kinda _wanna_ shoot it again—”

“Don’t make me take that thing from you.” 

“I’d like to see you try.”

The tentacle-beast was shrinking, dissolving into a very unpleasant pastelike substance not unlike canned tomato sauce mixed with mod podge. It was immobile now, surely dead. 

“Great,” Dave said suddenly, “That’s all, right? We can get the fuck out now?” 

“I guess so.” John sounded almost disappointed, and then he approached the camera, picking it up and looking down into it. He was sweaty and his cheek was starting to bruise, but he broke out in a huge grin when he saw the camera wasn’t broken. “Oh, fuck yeah, dude.” 

“Huh?”

“We got all of that!” He turned to look back at Dave. “We got proof of the weird bullshit!” 

“Great,” Dave didn’t sound very enthusiastic. John hefted the camera, looking back to it. Now the room could be seen a bit better; offwhite walls, a bed, more windows. The focus was on John, beaming proudly, and, behind him, Dave, wiping blood off his nose with a grimace. “Let’s get the hell out of here.” 

“We didn’t even get to celebrate our victory yet!” John pointed out, turning the camera to look at Dave. Dave wasn’t paying attention to him, glaring down disdainfully at the dead monster. 

“We can celebrate by—” Dave started, but then the view shifted as John slung the camera downward, stepping forward, and then the camera saw just their feet and the hardwood flooring. The camera bumped into John’s torso and the lens went out of focus, struggling to figure out what it was meant to be looking at, eventually settling on John’s left shoe. A few strange muffled noises later, something pushed John back and he laughed as Dave said, “Fuckin’— _why?”_

“Why not?” 

“You better cut that outta the video.” The camera lifted again to reveal a glaring Dave.

“Sure,” John answered in a tone that indicated it wasn’t likely, and Dave’s eyes narrowed in annoyance. “Alright, c’mon, let’s go.” The angle shifted as John threw one arm over Dave’s shoulders, clapping him on the back amicably, lifting the camera up to show the both of them again. Dave tilted his head down and away, not-at-all-subtly trying to hide his face. “Well,” John began in his dramatic narrator voice again, “now you’ve seen it—some of the horrors that lurk in this world. Horrors only we—”

“And Marconi, and any other schmuck with some guns, spare time, and a lack of sanity—” Dave interjected.

“—Shut up, man, _come on_.” John huffed. “These horrors are the kinds we, thanks to the awesome powers of the Soy Sauce, can fight easily—”

“Speak for yourself. That thing nearly choked me out.” 

“It wasn’t _that—”_

“It flung you into a wall like a sack of potatoes. Can we just fuckin’ go already?” 

John sighed irritably and the camera dropped down again. “Fiiiiiiine. Crybaby.”

Dave punched him in the ribs lightly and the view shook violently as John yelped out a laughter-broken, “Ow! Fucker!” before it hard-cut to a shaky view of John’s hand. He was setting the camera up in Dave’s car, again, but when he leaned back this time there was less of Dave visible. It was later afternoon now, the light more orange than the yellowy-white it had been before. “Well. Case closed,” he was being dramatic again. “We got out unscathed, with just Dave’s fatass leaving a hole in the floor.” 

“Doubt anybody cares,” Dave interjected. 

“Nah. Just gotta hope no homeless dude falls in.” John scratched his nose. “Anyways.” And on with the dramatic voice again, “You’ve just seen a John-and-Dave case from start to finish, been exposed to the dark underbelly of this world, where the veil between worlds is—” 

“You’ve been watching too much Twilight Zone,” Dave interjected. 

“C’mon, lemme have a good outro, will ya?” 

“No.”

John laughed. “Jackass.” He leaned forward again, picking up the camera, and it swung about dizzyingly for yet another time as he continued, “You know, you’re lucky I love you.” 

The video cut before Dave could respond. 


	20. And They Were Soulmates...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John considers himself a Bullshit Ritual Aficionado at this point. He'd never expected this one to _work._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> john/dave/amy  
> quick note: this follows the Korean mythos of the red-string-of-fate soulmates concept, where the string is tied to each person's pinkie finger. just throwin that out there to avoid confusion as i know there's some variations!  
> i wrote this all in one sitting today to pretend i dont have homework to do ... h a h

John never really put much stock in ‘soulmates.’ He didn’t think it was really something that existed, being too sappy and ludicrous (and sweet) an idea to possibly be real, and even if it did, he doubted he would have one. Still, he couldn’t deny being immensely curious about the whole thing and, given he was always ready to try out weird shit, it was only natural that he try out the first “here’s how to summon the string that ties you to your soulmate” wikihow article he found. It wasn’t too hard, after all, and he found himself wondering why more people didn’t try it out. Granted, it probably didn’t work for most people.

But it worked for him. 

He opened his eyes at the end of the ridiculous ritual, fully expecting to feel very, very stupid for even thinking it would work, but he lifted his hands before him and saw a tiny, thin red string wound around his righthand pinkie finger, stretching out before him. He stared. He blinked and turned his hand over, sure it would disappear or be a trick of the light, but it didn’t. It shimmered faintly, almost but not quite glowing. Just a vague luminescence to it. 

“Huh.” He mumbled aloud. “Neat.” 

He supposed having a soulmate was real, after all. But now what? He pulled his hand a little closer to his face, then gingerly reached out with his other hand to touch the string, just to make sure it was real. It felt oddly warm, he realized as he gently rubbed two fingers along it, but it was only when he was pinching it between his middle and forefinger and thumb that he made an important discovery. 

It was _two_ strings. 

That made the world tilt just a little bit, but he rationalized it quickly. Someone who got around as much as him, of course he’d end up having more than one girl, right? Was that how it worked? He didn’t know. Nothing in anything he’d read had suggested there’d ever be more than one, unless it was a platonic soulmate—though, he couldn’t find much on that, most people seemed to consider it only theoretical—but those supposedly weren’t red. And he hadn’t done anything to indicate he was looking for his _platonic_ soulmate(s) anyways. The ritual had made it pretty clear it was a romantical thing. 

Despite it being somewhere near four in the morning, John elected to go out and see if he could find at least one of these soulmates, if they were in Undisclosed anyways. He wasn’t about to cross city lines for this just yet, he still had work tomorrow and he was a hair’s breadth away from being fired (again), which he didn’t need right now. He resolved to give himself until five in the morning to find one of them and, if he failed, he’d just try again on his next day off. 

Funny enough, it was pretty easy, actually, following the strings. They seemed to be leading to the same place, which he hoped didn’t actually mean they were both across the globe or something. It might’ve been a wild goose chase, but he couldn't sleep and he was actually a little excited about it, much as he, again, did not believe in soulmates. The strings kept together as he drove, looking like an absolute idiot with one hand on the steering wheel and the other held up, letting the red threads act like a GPS. He kept wondering what it was that gave him two threads. Was one of them going to die, and then he’d find the other? Was it a Sister-Wives situation? He wasn’t exactly opposed to that, but he didn’t want to get dragged into some weird religious thing about it. Maybe it’d just be completely neutral actually, no big deal at all, no weird shit that he couldn’t handle. 

He was starting to turn down some very familiar streets, and the threads were slowly lifting, as well. That was confusing until he remembered most people are sleeping at four in the morning and some people have upstairs bedrooms. He turned down the same street Dave and Amy lived on and had the thought, _Wouldn’t it be funny if my soulmate lived on the same street as—…_

He stopped as he realized where the threads were pointing. Right up into the building that held The Venus Flytrap, into the wall above the store. 

Into Dave and Amy’s apartment. 

Suddenly it all made sense, much as it knocked the wind right out of him. He sat in his car, engine idling, and stared up at the wall, processing. Yeah, it made sense. If there were any two people he could believe he was tethered to until the end of time, it was them. He just… hadn’t quite expected _this_. And some part of him suddenly worried, were they able to see the strings, too? How long did this last? The ritual didn’t give any details as to whether or not this would wear off or if his soulmate(s) could see it too. He wondered what the hell that would be like, Dave and Amy waking up to random strings on their hands. He winced, already embarrassed. He wasn’t about to wake them up for it—and some part of him was hoping it would wear off by morning, or he could just run away from it—so he just drove back home and stared at the ceiling all night long, thinking carefully. He hadn’t wanted to confront that yet. He’d _known_ , because of course he’d known, but he’d been doing his best _not_ to know, and now he’d gone and practically put up a bright neon sign saying “hey! Guess what! We aren’t just best friends, I’m in love with you!” before he’d even been prepared to say something like that in the privacy of his own mind. It made sleeping… difficult. He was afraid. He was very afraid, actually, of what was going to happen. He hadn’t thought about it, hadn’t tried to figure out how they’d react. Amy probably would take it just fine, or at least he hoped she would. She’d never seemed to be into him, but then again he wasn’t the best at figuring out if anyone genuinely loved him. He couldn’t ever figure out if he genuinely loved anybody, either, but maybe it had been staring him right in the face. After all, he cared about Dave and Amy both pretty fiercely—he’d do _anything_ for them, and from reading Dave’s books he’d realized that was mutual. He’d just never entertained that that kind of intensity might be romantic. 

He lifted his hand again and stared at it. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe all of the threads were red, platonic or romantic, maybe the website had it wrong. He sat up and pawed around for the papers again, clicking on his light again to reread the process, make sure he hadn’t fucked anything up. He read it three times. He’d definitely done it right and it didn’t say much of anything about ‘platonic soulmates,’ just a whole lot about ‘true love’ and other garbagey Valentine’s-Day-type bullshit he never bought into. 

He let his head flop down onto his mattress. “Jesus christ, I’m fucked,” he mumbled. Being in love with one best friend was bad enough, but being in love with his only two best friends? Double whammy. Coming to terms with it right after doing some kind of bullshit spell-or-whatever that might let them know? Oh, he was doomed. He’d thought this would be funny! He’d thought nothing would happen at all and he’d get a chuckle out of it and maybe he could convince Dave to do it with him tomorrow and then make fun of him for going along with it! It wasn’t supposed to be _real_ , goddamnit, and now he had to find a way to seem like he didn’t care, lest he give away that he really _really_ cared after all. 

* * *

Dave woke groggily the next morning, as per usual, and for a moment he didn’t notice anything was off until he lifted a hand to brush it through Amy’s hair and realized it had something on it. “The fuck?” He mumbled reflexively, pulling back to stare at it. 

Amy stirred with a little “mmm?” noise, easing her eyes open. Dave turned his hand one way, then the other, baffled by the two red strings wound around his pinkie finger. One fell limply down, stretching under the bedsheets, while the other was taut and stretching off into space. She glanced up, then turned over to see what he was giving that perplexed, almost concerned expression. She stared at his hand sleepily, then lifted her own to look at. She still wasn’t fully awake yet, but he could see the gears turning in her head as her eyes slid along the string from her hand to his. And then they both traced the other string with their eyes, looking at the way it disappeared through the wall. “Huh.” Amy commented quietly. 

Dave looked back at the string wound around his finger and started gently trying to pry it off, just to see if he could. It wasn’t cutting off his circulation or anything, so he wasn't exactly worried, but it _was_ really fucking weird. He couldn't actually feel the string on his finger, though he could touch it. He was… glad, he guessed? that one of the strings seemed to be tying him to Amy. Granted, he still had no clue what the strings were even about, but that seemed to be a good sign. Or maybe it was a bad one, if it was marking them to fucking die or something. He couldn’t pry it off. He couldn’t get the right purchase on it, so he just gave up. “This is weird,” he remarked to no one in particular, because Amy already knew it was weird. 

“Mhm,” she mumbled, rubbing her face, then snuggling into his chest. “Can you bring me my pain pills?” 

He leaned down and gave her forehead a kiss. “Sure.” 

Fifteen or so minutes later, they’d both woken up enough to be thinking more smartly about the weird strings thing. Amy in particular found it entertaining to bring her hand close to his to watch the string shrink, then tug it away quickly. It never dragged his hand, the string just suddenly materialized again, and she was trying to figure out just how that could happen when the string was, clearly, from the way they could touch it, a very tangible thing. 

“I’m gonna call John,” Dave said suddenly after she’d done this for the fifth time, like it just occurred to him. “This is probably some weird bullshit we could at least use his help with.” He didn’t say he was wondering if John caused it, because he had no basis for that other than the fact that sometimes shit went sideways because John metaphorically poked the metaphorical universe-devouring bear. 

“Okay,” she replied, doing the hand-thing yet again. 

John, as it turned out, had slept through his alarm. He woke to the ringing of his phone, startled and confused and immediately disappointed with himself. And then when he lifted his hand to grab it he saw the string again, and his stomach dropped when he saw Dave’s name on the caller ID. 

“Oh, fuck.” He stared for a second, contemplating not answering, but then he picked the phone up anyways. “Heeeyyyy, Dave,” he began, like nothing was going on. "What's, uh…"

“Hey. You wake up with a string on your hand?” 

John fell silent. 

“’Cause me and Amy both have one and it’s weirding me out. Is this some Dave-and-John bullshit or did a tiny little elf come in and tie our hands together with magical string and I just have to live like this now?” 

John tried to think quickly and his sleepy brain did not comply with the request. “Uhhh…”

It was the _uhhh_ he gave when he was trying to think of a way to talk himself out of trouble with Dave, and they both knew it. He considered telling Dave he had to go to work and couldn’t do this right now, but they both knew he’d be lying if he said he cared more about work than about weird shit. “Oh, what’d you do?”

Well, he was going to get fired, anyways. “I’ll be right over to explain, promise.”

“ ** _John—”_ ** Dave began, clearly annoyed, but John hung up before Dave could even get started on him. 

* * *

For the first time in possibly ever, John approached Dave and Amy’s apartment with trepidation. Dave had not sounded happy. Did he know about the soulmates thing? Was he pissed at John or just crabby in general? He took the steps up to their door very cautiously, fetched the spare key, and stepped in, bunching the papers he’d printed out from wikihow in his hand. Dave was sitting on the two-seater they all pretended was a real couch, a chipped mug of coffee in his hand, and he glanced over apathetically when John entered, then looked down at his hand, traced the other red string and, as John walked over, his eyes widened as the realization dawned on him. “You _do_ have one, too,” Dave said in a tone that wasn’t quite accusatory but certainly was something adjacent. 

“I can explain—”

“What’d you do?” 

“Look, I didn’t think it’d _work_.” John elected to keep standing, a little afraid of being too close to Dave. Amy leaned in the doorway to the kitchen, arms crossed but not in a confrontational manner. She eyed John curiously, lifting her own hand to look at the thread. She traced both lines over to the two men and then, after a second of glancing between them, smiled. In that moment John knew that she knew, and it genuinely relieved him. 

“Didn’t think _what_ would work?” Dave prompted, irritated. 

“Well, listen,” John began, taking a deep breath to stabilize. “Lately I’ve been going through a bunch of, like, internet urban legend rituals, trying to figure out if they’re legit or not—if they’re anything we could, I dunno, use? You know?” He waved the papers. Dave eyed them. “Most of them are bullshit, because of course they are, and then I did this one just ’cuz I couldn’t sleep last night and I didn’t think it’d work, but, well…” He hesitated for a moment before shoving the papers at Dave, taking a step back once Dave took them. Dead silence settled as he anxiously watched Dave rifle through the papers, reading carefully. His brow furrowed as he went, seeming confused. Amy stepped away from the doorway for a moment and John instantly felt just a little bit more afraid. 

Dave put the papers down in his lap. “Why would you even wanna do this?” 

“Couldn’t sleep? Seemed like something stupid?” John shrugged, secretly relieved Dave didn’t seem to care. “Honestly, I thought it’d be really funny to try it, see it doesn’t work, then try to convince you it does work. Y’know, as a prank. But…” He lifted his hand with a bit of a sheepish grin. Dave lifted his own hand and seemed to finally trace the extra string from his hand to John’s, and John watched the knowledge finally sink in and sat down next to him gingerly, still not sure Dave wasn’t about to blow up and have a crisis over it. But he saw first shock then confusion then a realization and, finally, a quiet settling-back into his typical neutral expression. He lowered his hand, nodded, then tossed the papers onto the coffee table.

“So, what, you gonna fall in love with me now?” Dave quipped, leaning back slightly. 

“Only if you’d like me to,” John answered in kind. Dave snorted and John let the moment almost pass before adding, “Love the implication that _you’ve_ already fallen in love with _me_ , though.” 

“You _wish_.” Dave smacked his arm lightly. 

_Boy, do I ever,_ John thought to himself, but he kept quiet for once. Not for long, though. “Gayass.” 

“You’re the gayass.” 

Amy joined them then, PopTart in hand, sitting down on Dave’s other side. “Maybe you’re both gaybutts,” she pointed out wisely. “You both have a string, after all.” 

“Good point,” Dave relented, then furrowed his brow. “Wait, what would happen if it was unrequited?” 

Amy shrugged. “I dunno. I think there’s probably no such thing as a thread for an unrequited soulmate. Like, if it’s not requited, it’s not meant to be, right?” 

John looped one arm over Dave’s shoulders, startling him. “So I was right, you _are_ gay for me!” 

“You missing the part where this makes _you_ gay, too?” Dave turned on him with something close to a glare, in the same manner that 90% of his facial expressions were close to a glare. 

“I’ve _been_ bisexual, Dave, keep up.” He patted Dave’s shoulder before retracting his arm. 

Dave froze, caught off-guard. “What.” 

“What?” John replied innocently. 

Amy tried and failed to muffle her fit of giggles, and Dave gave her a bewildered did-you-know-that-already?! kind of stare. She didn’t, but it was the funniest way to come out she’d heard so far. 

“This is too fucking weird.” Dave said bluntly, looking overwhelmed. 

John shrugged as he picked up the TV remote and clicked it on. “Isn’t damn near everything in our lives too fuckin’ weird? Honestly, I’m surprised you’re even able to say that anymore.”

Dave mulled that over for a second before realizing John was right. Why was this weird? He was stuck with John one way or the other, he knew that—at first he’d figured it was just because of the Soy Sauce but now… maybe it wasn’t. Maybe things would’ve always ended this way, Soy Sauce or not. After all, he couldn’t bear living without John, he knew that, but he’d never figured it was anything concrete. Actually, he’d never truly thought about it—never felt like he needed to, never had the inclination to sit and ponder the exact nature of his "I can't live without you" feelings. He stared off into space, processing, chewing through his own emotions for once and it just sort of hit him upside the head. 

“Of course.” He said suddenly. 

“Huh?” Amy glanced over. 

“Of course we’re all tied together. It makes sense. Doesn’t it?” He glanced between the two of them. “Haven’t we always been? Ever since the fuckin’ start of this bullshit?” 

“I guess so,” John replied thoughtfully, and he genuinely seemed to be thinking about it. He looked back at his hand. “Maybe it’s not necessarily a romantical thing after all.” 

Dave and Amy both elected not to comment. Amy surreptitiously glanced up to Dave and tried not to grin at the light-pink hue of his face. He cleared his throat and looked at his hand again, a string stretching to either side of him, and said, “How do we make these go away? I mean—we know now, so, what’s the point? It’s just gonna get in the way.” 

John shrugged. “I dunno. Maybe it wears off eventually?” 

Amy, curious, reached over and gently took hold of Dave’s hand. The string seemed to melt away by the lack of distance, and she said, “John, hold his hand.” 

“Huh?” Dave looked at her, baffled, but John was already reaching over, wrapping his bony fingers around both their hands. 

The strings vanished. 

Amy gingerly withdrew her hand, but the strings stayed gone, and she grinned. “It worked!” 

“Well, that’s good,” John pulled his hand back as well. “Don’t really need a beacon to tell me where you guys are, given I can always summon Dave whenever I like,” he gave his best friend a cheeky grin. Dave glared. 

“I have to go to work,” Amy sighed lightly, getting up. 

That seemed to jog Dave’s brain back into working order, and he glanced at her before turning back to John. “Wait, don’t you have a job, too?” 

“I probably got fired.” John shrugged, then leaned over a bit to call to Amy as she left the apartment, “Have a good day at work!” 

“Thank you!” She called back as the door shut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> endings, im terrible at them. i might edit this to put more in it cause it's kinda abrupt but as it stands: there it is.  
> ...i gotta go quit pretendin iont have obligations now.


	21. What the fuck, Dave?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dave's not a fan of small talk. Especially not when it's not actually small talk, it's just someone using him as a brick wall to talk to.  
> john/dave/amy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> another one based loosely on a conversation i had with ben honestly half of these are based on conversations we have asdfghjkl;  
> also i kind of forgot to publish this one way back when i wrote it oops. ive been distracted workin on my au lmao.

The conversation was taking too long. That was something Dave had thought ten minutes ago when his cup was still half-full. It was empty now, mostly because he took a sip every time this chick’s rambling made him want to scream, and he was starting to lose his patience. He usually didn’t have any, but the alcohol had gifted him some.

Not enough, though. 

It was getting to the point that Dave was beginning to think about how the next time his boyfriend tried begging him to go with him to some stupid party, he’d just tell him to fuck right off. He tried surreptitiously scanning the few faces out on the balcony for any sign of John or Amy, but none could be found. They were smart, they’d stayed inside. He hoped John would come out for a smoke and rescue him soon. 

The girl was still going on about her roommate. He wasn’t sure how long she’d been on this particular topic, but it definitely wasn’t the one the conversation started on and it wasn’t one he gave even _half_ of a shit about but he was trapped in this terrible, terrible interaction. He hadn’t been able to figure out a way for it to end just yet, try as he might—any time he even hinted he was going to leave it seemed she redoubled her chattering energy, like she really wanted to keep him around. By this point he was starting to wonder if it was some fucked-up social experiment: _find the ugliest guy at the party and see how long it takes him to tell a pretty girl to fuck off!_ Well, the joke was on her, if it was a joke, anyway; he already had a girlfriend (and a boyfriend) prettier than her—in his opinion, anyway—and he was too socially awkward to tell her to fuck off before the half-hour mark regardless. 

Dave glanced over the balcony he was leaning against. Below, he could see the pond this part of the house leaned over, and he peered down, trying to gauge its depth. He’d heard someone earlier suggest swimming there. It was dark now, so that wasn’t too likely to happen, and it made it harder to see, but on the way here John had told him excitedly about how he caught a small fish one time by fishing off the balcony, so it was at least deep enough for fish.

Deep enough for fish, deep enough for Dave. 

He dumped his empty cup on the ground and took a couple steps away to give himself a good run-up—the girl was _still_ talking like he wasn’t doing something insane—and then vaulted over the edge of it, drawing a shocked gasp from her. It was a short but pretty terrifying plummet, during which he sucked in a deep breath and plugged his nose, and then he splashed loudly into the water below; lucky for him, it was indeed deep enough. Once he’d righted himself, his feet barely grazed the bottom.

John had been looking for him for a solid two minutes at this point, and, having exhausted all the quieter rooms he knew Dave would gravitate towards, he decided to check the balcony, pushing open the sliding-glass door just in time to see his boyfriend chuck himself off the edge. “OH SHIT!” He yelled, dropping his beer and sprinting to the balcony. “There was water under him, right?!” He leaned over, looking down at the rippling water below. “DAVE?!”

A pale head and broad shoulders clad in an old greyish-black t-shirt surfaced. Dave shook his head to fling water off his hair, wiped water out of his eyes before opening them to look up. “Oh, thank god,” John breathed the moment he recognized the form waving up at him as Dave. John waved back with a relieved smile. 

“He… he just, he just jumped off,” someone John hadn’t paid any attention to said, and he turned to his left to look at a very confused and frightened-seeming girl. “We were having a conversation and he just…?”

John shrugged. “He’s an introvert.” Then, as if that explained everything, he ignored her again, even as she started to sputter out more confused speech. “LOOK OUT BELOW!” He called down before he too took a couple paces back, immediately followed by sprinting up to and vaulting over the edge of the balcony. He soared down with a loud whooping yell before crashing into the water in perfect cannonball form a few meters away from Dave. He surged back up through the water with another triumphant shout, shaking his hair out and pawing it off his face before grinning at Dave. “You crazy motherfucker,” John laughed, and his arm splashed loudly through the water as he lifted it to drape over Dave’s shoulder, leaning in as quickly as he could for an equally-quick kiss, murmuring, “I fuckin’ love you.” 

Dave snickered. “Love you too,” he replied equally-quietly, glancing up behind them. That girl who’d been talking at him was looking over the balcony in complete disbelief, though Dave couldn’t tell if she’d been watching too closely. He didn’t really give a shit if she had. Everyone else on the balcony knew John and, through him, knew Dave at least a little bit. This kind of stupid shit was another Tuesday for them; no one even glanced over, he was sure, nor would they really care should she say anything. “Did you see Amy while you were up there?” Dave shifted to be more on his back, floating as opposed to treading water. The one thing his fat was good for, in his opinion, was keeping him afloat.

“Yeah, she’s on a couch in the main room. Y’know, making friends. Which you weren’t doing.” 

“That girl talked for, I’m sure, a solid _half hour_ , John. I couldn’t even get a single fuckin’ word in.” 

John laughed again. “Pushover. You should’ve just started sayin’ weird shit!” 

“Maybe.” Dave replied, then relented, “Yeah, probably. Whatever. I’m out of it now.” He sighed. John nodded, bemused, and for a moment they relaxed in the water. It was nice, refreshingly cool, relatively still. If there were any fish there, they’d scared them off. 

And then John decided to start some shit, because the peace had lasted for five whole minutes. He glanced over to Dave, who was enjoying the quiet up until John swept a wave of water at him. He sputtered and flailed for a second, confused, and John cackled. “Oh, you motherfff—” Dave arced his arm quickly across the surface, sending up a wave to completely envelop John. 

“Aw, jesus,” John snorted water out of his nose after recovering, “how the fuck are you so good at that?”

“Bigger surface area,” Dave replied before mercilessly splashing him again.

“Fuck!” John laughed, putting one arm up in an ineffective attempt to shield himself. 

“Why do you always pull this shit when you know damn well you’ll lose?” Dave snickered while John did his best to paddle out of Dave’s range. Dave let him—for now. 

“I don’t always lose,” John rebutted, kicking out one leg to catch Dave off-guard with a splash. 

It worked. “Aw, fuckin’—” Dave spat out some water, then grinned almost menacingly. “I was _gonna_ let you live—”

“Oh, fuck,” John laughed, trying to swim away in time. 

“—but now I _have_ to kill you.” Dave lunged after him. His hand grazed John’s foot but he couldn’t get a grip on him. He could, however, lash one arm out and splash a wave over the back of his head.

“I can swim faster than you can!” John called gleefully. 

“Get back here and let me fuckin’ drown you already!” Dave laughed. 

“No way! Come and _get_ me, bastard!” With that, John dove under the water. 

“Aw, fuck.” Dave paused, looking down into the water. It was a little deeper here, too dark to see through; he was having to tread water with no clue how far down the bottom was, and it wouldn’t be above John, little shit that he is, to grab him and yank him down into the water. He was trying to brace for that, not wanting to reflexively kick John in the face, when suddenly he felt a hand pat his ass right before something erupted out of the water behind him, showering him in droplets. “Fuckin’ hell—”

“Gotcha!” John grinned, already paddling away by the time Dave turned around. He splashed a wave at John anyways, and John ducked, putting up one arm to shield his face. 

They kept up their little war for a stretch of time. They weren’t at all sure of how long that stretch was, having far too much fun to care about things like that, and didn’t notice the volume of the party above petering out. What they did notice, however, was the arrival of their girlfriend; a sharp whistle was heard from the shore, and both boys looked over. Amy held up her arm, two towels draped over it. “Come on! It’s time to head home!” She called. 

“Awwww mooooom do we _have_ to?” John yelled back jokingly. Dave rolled his eyes and started to clumsily paddle his way over to the shore. (He wasn’t the greatest swimmer out there.) 

Amy played along. “Yes, dear, you have to. It’s three AM! You’ll catch cold!” 

Despite starting to swim after Dave had, John still reached the shore first, shaking himself off as he stepped over the slippery rocks, being careful for once in his life, looking down. Once his feet touched dirt, though, he pranced over to Amy cheerfully, snagging the towel she offered. Dave stumbled onto shore a minute later, swearing a little as he stepped on some sharp rocks. His flip-flops did not offer him any protection here.

John toweled off his hair first before any of the rest of him, saying, “So, hey, where’re we headed?” It was the surreptitious way of asking whose place they were crashing at that night, or if they’d rather split up for the evening. This code was the only genuinely-tactful one the other two could actually get John on board with. 

“Figure we still have time for a couple rounds of COD,” Amy replied, glancing to Dave, who was patting his shorts dry. 

He nodded. “Easily.” 

All of this meant, of course, that they’d be spending the night at John’s, and that Dave was enthusiastically on-board with that idea. John grinned. “Sweet! I’ll totally kick your ass at it.” There was no code there, John was just being a braggart. He wrung his shirt dry, then decided that wasn’t dry enough (or just wanted an excuse to take it off) and promptly peeled it off of him, slinging it over his shoulder. “I can drive. I’m barely even buzzed.” Neither of the other two challenged that, and so it was decided.

* * *

Dave snored contentedly, facedown and drooling on John’s nice sheets, one arm slung over John’s chest and the other curled around Amy’s shoulders. His head was turned to one side, facing John, and John fondly watched him for a second, reaching over to gently brush some hair off Dave’s forehead. He then glanced beyond Dave to Amy, curled up behind him, head buried in Dave’s shoulder, eyelashes fluttering with sleep. He couldn’t quite reach over to her with his free arm (the other was being held hostage between his own ribcage and Dave’s much-softer side), but that was alright. He shifted a little, pressing closer to Dave, then looked up at his ceiling. 

Lately, he’d been thinking. (This was more unusual for him than he’d typically admit.) He had been thinking quite a lot, mainly about the concept of asking Dave and Amy to move in with him. While Dave was always quite private about monetary issues, mostly because between him and Amy it was a bit of a tangled issue—John knew he hated not being able to contribute financially but she’d insisted he focus on his mental health and leave rent up to her—Amy wasn’t a stranger to asking for help and John wasn’t a stranger to giving all he possibly could. They’d been managing just fine, between Amy’s paycheck and John’s contributions, but he didn’t like the thought of them considering it a debt to him. Amy wouldn’t necessarily (though she had said, adamantly, she’d repay him however she could), but he knew Dave would want to pay him back penny-for-penny if he could, no matter how long it would take. John wasn’t interested in that. He wasn’t interested in it being a transaction at all. He just wanted to help support them, and he knew they could all fit in his bed, and he had enough closet space for their things and his house was big enough for whatever furniture they’d want to bring and, most important of all, he _wanted_ them there, dammit. They were almost-always together these days, after all, when they had free time, so this wasn’t like it was coming out of left field. It had evolved from something that simply didn’t bother him to something he actively looked forward to and wished he had more of. 

That being said, he knew Dave would, potentially, balk at the idea, either due to the imagined strain on John or due to his not wanting to give up the privacy of his own home to be in, apart from everyone else. Of the three he was most likely to appreciate alone time, to just exist in someplace quiet by himself. That was really the only thing keeping John from asking, because he wasn’t sure in what way Dave would say ‘no’ and he didn’t want it to potentially force them into a rough patch. 

John shimmied around a little bit to get more comfortable, settling in to finally sleep. He decided he wouldn’t ask just yet—maybe he’d wait for Dave to get just a bit better, then test the waters, talk it over with Amy—but he’d keep it in mind. He knew he wanted it eventually, but he was willing to wait. He’d technically already decided that, forever ago it felt like. He’d wait ’til the end of time for Dave.


End file.
